THE SILVER GULL 



(Larus argentatus) 



IN its adult plumage, with the snow-white head, neck, and under-parts, the 

 delicate French grey back and wings, and the white-spotted black tips to the 

 larger flight-feathers, the silver gull, or herring-gull, as it is more commonly 

 called, is one of the most beautiful members of a lovely tribe of birds. Indeed, 

 whether swimming calmly on the surface of the sea, or skimming over the crests of 

 the waves borne on their long and powerful pinions, and every now and then 

 plunging into the water to seize a fish or some floating morsel of food, gulls in 

 general are some of the most elegant and graceful of all birds, their delicate 

 colouring, in which grey and white, relieved to a greater or less extent by black or 

 chocolate, generally predominate, thus giving a refinement to their whole appearance 

 which is wanting in many birds of brilliant plumage. Were it not that their cries, 

 their tempers, and their habits are by no means angelic, gulls might well have been 

 selected as emblems of the angels. 



The white and pale grey plumage, replaced in a few species by a wholly 

 white or cream-coloured livery, is, however, developed only in the adults ; birds of 

 the year having the back and wings thickly mottled with brown and dark grey, and 

 the tail black, while the head and neck are wholly brown ; the beak, moreover, in 

 the species forming the subject of the Plate, being black instead of orange. From 

 this we learn that gulls are descended from birds with relatively dark plumage, 

 which may perhaps have been dwellers on the land ; and if this be so, these 

 beautiful birds evidently acquired their present type of colouring only when they 

 took to a life on the ocean wave. In any case, the pale livery of the adult gull 

 must be regarded as a special adaptation to its mode of life ; such a garb being the 

 one which harmonises best with the foam-flecked waves of the waste of waters. 



The herring-gull closely resembles in colouring the common gull {Larus 

 canus), and like that species is abundant on the British coasts, or, for that matter, 

 on the Thames at London Bridge or the ornamental water in St. James's Park in 

 winter. It is, however, a much larger bird, attaining a length of about 22 inches 

 in the case of adult males. 



This species, moreover, is much less intolerant of heat than the common 

 gull ; and while the former is compelled to wing its way to the more northern 

 coasts for the breeding-season, the herring-gull, like the kittiwake, nests by scores 

 on the southern coast of England, wherever conditions suitable to its habits exist. 

 The kittiwake, it may be mentioned, differs from other gulls by the absence of the 

 hind-toe, and is therefore referred to a genus by itself, under the appropriate name 



*8 



