ICELAND GULL. 
151 
icebergs. As these birds are not shy, but rather sociable and 
easily tamed, they sometimes attach themselves to parties of 
fishing boats, in order to pick up any offal or dead fish that 
the sailors throw overboard. In saying that the Iceland Gull 
follows the shoals of large sea-fishes, we wish to add that it 
does so in order to obtain the smaller fishes that are driven 
near the surface by their finny pursuers ; the herrings are a 
sufficiently attractive prey in themselves. Although the prin¬ 
cipal food of the Iceland Gull consists in fish, this bird also 
consumes the entrails of dead marine animals, Crustacea, and 
mollusca. 
The reproduction of this species takes place in high 
northern latitudes, and the localities are said to be the same 
as those frequented by the glaucus gull. In Iceland it is 
not known to breed ; neither nests nor eggs having been found 
there by any naturalist that we have heard of. On the 
shores of Greenland, about the same latitude as Iceland, 
we are informed that this gull breeds, and the nests are 
found there invariably in parties, but not singly ; the eggs 
are two or three in a nest, resembling those of the black- 
backed gull. 
The Iceland Gull measures twenty-two inches in length ; 
the beak from the forehead to the tip two inches ; the tarsus 
two inches three lines. This bird is consequently much 
smaller than the glaucus gull. 
The adult male in summer has the head, neck, and all the 
under parts pure white, the entire quill-feathers also white; 
the back and wing-coverts are pale ash grey ; the tips of the 
tertials and greater wing-coverts white ; the beak yellow, with 
a red spot on the under mandible, and a deeper yellow tinge 
on the tip and gape ; the eyes are yellow ; the eyelids red ; 
the legs and fent are flesh red. 
The winter plumage differs in having the top of the head 
