Gulls 



brown, sometimes whitish, eggs, spotted, blotched, and scrawled 

 with brown, are laid in June. In the nesting grounds the her- 

 ring gulls are shy of men and fierce in defending their mates and 

 young, to whom they are especially devoted. Akah, hahah they 

 scream or bark at the intruder, making a din that is fairly deaf- 

 ening. 



Before the summer is ended the baby gulls will have learned 

 to breast a gale, sleep with head tucked under wing when 

 rocked on the cradle of the deep, and follow a ship for the ref- 

 use thrown overboard, like any veteran. They are the grayish 

 brown birds which one can readily pick out in a flock of adults 

 when they migrate to our coasts in winter. 



Ring-billed Gull 



(Larus delawarensis) 



Length — i8.50to 19.75 inches. 



Male and Female — Mantle over back and wings light pearl color, 

 rest of plumage white except in winter, when the head and 

 nape are spotted, not streaked, with grayish brown. Wings 

 have "first primary black, with a white spot near the tip, 

 the base of the inner half of the inner web pearl gray; on the 

 third to sixth primaries the black decreases rapidly and each 

 one is tipped with white." (Chapman.) Bill light greenish 

 yellow, chrome at the tip, and encircled with a broad band of 

 black. Legs and feet dusky bluish green. Immature birds 

 are mottled white and dusky, the dark tint varied with pale 

 buff prevailing on the upper parts, the white below. Tail 

 is dusky, tipped with white and pale gray at the base. 



Range — Distributed over North America, nests from Great 

 Lakes and New England northward, especially in the St. 

 Lawrence region, the Bay of Fundy, and Newfoundland; 

 more common in the interior than on the seacoast; winters 

 south of New England to Cuba and Central America. 



Season — Common winter visitor. 



"On the whole the commonest species, both coastwise and 

 in the interior," says Dr. Elliott Coues. Certainly around the 

 salt lakes of the plains and in limited areas elsewhere in the 

 west it is most abundant, and at many points along the Atlantic 

 coast ; but off the shores of the Middle and the Southern, if not 

 also of the New England States, it is the herring gull that 



41 



