PEWIT GULL. 
lUil 
its provincial designations, in order to distinguish it from 
other dark-headed gulls; many ornithologists give it the name 
of Black-headed Gull, which is not applicable, as the colour 
of its head is never black, but dark brown. 
The chosen locality of the Pewit Gull is a flat, swampy 
sea-shore, or the equally wet and boggy swamps or islands 
in lakes and fenny districts, either near the sea coast or many 
miles away from the sea. Many hundreds breed on the 
low islands of our southern coast, as well as on equally 
suitable parts of the entire coast of England and Ireland ; 
and where the nature of the Scottish coast invites it, by being 
flat, low and marshy. In Norfolk there is a favourite, low, 
wet and boggy island on Scoulton Mere, where the Pewit 
Gull is known to congregate every year in immense numbers 
for the purpose of breeding. Mr. Selby mentions a large 
pond at Pallinsburn in Northumberland which is annually 
visited for the same purpose by the Pewit Gull, and there is 
no doubt that many other localities might be enumerated to 
which the present species retires, and which it would regu¬ 
larly revisit, provided it were not disturbed or scared away by 
idle sportsmen, who destroy all that comes before them, with¬ 
out considering the extensive value such annual visitors would 
be to the agriculturists of the neighbourhood, if they were 
allowed the possession of undisturbed peace and quiet. 
The food of the Pewit Gull consists of worms, slugs, 
winged aquatic insects, the well-fed grubs of cockchafers, 
as well as the developed beetle, and other coleopterous in¬ 
sects ; their presence, therefore, in any country which they 
regularly visit in the spring of the year, must necessarily 
lessen the number of these plagues, and tormentors, by which 
farmers in many districts are so much molested ; especially 
as these birds are known to follow the plough in the same 
manner as rooks. At the time when this species frequents 
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