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up any refuse food that may be thrown out of the ship. Their powerful wings enable them to 

 keep up to the eight or ten knots an hour which the vessel is making, with the greatest ease. 

 With a scarcely perceptible stroke of the wing they can glide past at double speed. Probably 

 very few of these birds are breeding. Some of them are in the spotted immature plumage ; 

 others, though white on the breast, still have the black bar at the end of the tail, and are more 

 or less mottled on the back and wings. 



"In the Golden Horn at Constantinople this Gull is very common amongst the steamers, 

 sailing-vessels, and caiques which crowd the waters between Stamboul and Galata, picking up 

 the refuse floating on the water, in company with the Black Kite. It is very interesting to 

 watch these birds continually hovering over the water, and frequently darting down to the 

 surface — the Kites invariably seizing their prey with their feet, and the Gulls as invariably using 

 their bills for the same purpose. As you sail up the Golden Horn, under the two pontoon 

 bridges, the estuary soon narrows into a river, winding through the 'valley of the sweet waters.' 

 The channel is railed off from the shallow water full of flags and reeds, on each side, by wooden 

 palings. One afternoon (it would be about the third week of June last) I had an hour's row in 

 a caique up the valley. On returning late in the afternoon, the Gulls were sitting upon these 

 railings by the dozen together. They were so tame that they allowed our caique to glide past 

 them within a few yards without taking flight. They were almost all young birds in the brown- 

 spotted immature plumage, with grey legs. Perhaps one in twenty was in adult plumage, with 

 yellow legs. 



"At Missolonghi I often saw this bird flying over the lagoon. The low, swampy islands 

 which are so numerous in this shallow bay, are the favourite breeding-places of the Gull-billed 

 Tern [Sterna anglica), the common Tern [Sterna fluviatilis), the Lesser Tern [Sterna minuta), 

 the Kentish Plover (Mgialites cantianus), and the Pratincole (Glareola pratineola). There is 

 also a colony of Pelicans [Pelecanus crispus); but no Gulls breed there. They evidently prefer 

 a more secluded and rocky situation. I was told that they were breeding in large numbers on 

 the island of Makree, one of the Echinades, lying a few miles from the coast, opposite the mouth 

 of the Aspropotamo. Hearsay evidence is at best very unreliable in all matters relating to 

 natural history ; and little or no value can be attached to any information you may obtain from a 

 Greek. They have an inveterate propensity to tell lies, with or without provocation, and 

 entirely without shame ; in fact, if you tell a Greek that he is a liar, he rather takes it as a 

 compliment. Fortunately I made the acquaintance of Dr. Nieder in Missolonghi ; and from him 

 I learned that Schrader had many years ago visited the Echinades, and had found traces of Gulls 

 having bred, in considerable numbers, on a rocky island a little to the east of Makree. After a 

 great deal of trouble (for my Greek servant not only dreaded sea-sickness, but was afraid of being 

 drowned, and tried to frighten me with stories of brigands), I succeeded in engaging a boat to 

 take me to this island. We had a fair breeze to start with ; but a head wind set in at night, and 

 continued several days ; so that it was sixty-six hours after leaving Missolonghi that we landed 

 amongst the Gulls. Some time before we reached the island they seemed to have found out that 

 we were making for their breeding-grounds ; and instead of quietly crossing our track, or following 

 in our wake, they flew backwards and forwards and around us, showing by their loud cries that 

 they looked upon us as enemies. We had no difficulty in landing, though the shores of the 



