52 BULLETIN 113, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



LARUS HYFERBOBEUS Gunnerus. 

 GLAUCOUS GTTLL. 



HABITS. 



The name burgomaster is a fitting name for this chief magistrate 

 of the feathered tribes of the Arctic seas, where it reigns supreme 

 over all the lesser water fowl, levying its toll of food from their 

 eggs and defenseless young. Well they know its strength and dread 

 its power, as it sails majestically aloft over the somber, rocky cliffs 

 of the Greenland coast, where, with myriads of sea fowl, it makes 

 its summer home; and useless is it for them to resist the onslaught 

 of its heavy beak when it swoops down to rob them of their callow 

 young. Only the great skua, the fighting airship of the north, 

 dares to give it battle and to drive the tyrant burgomaster from 

 its chosen crag. Its only rival in size and power among the gulls 

 is the great black-backed gull, and where these twq meet on the 

 Labrador coast they treat each other with dignified respect. 



Spring. — The glaucous gull is more oceanic in its habits than other 

 large gulls. Though it resorts somewhat to inland lakes and rivers 

 during migrations and in winter, it seems to prefer the cold, bleak, 

 and rugged coasts of northern Labrador, Greenland, and the Arctic 

 islands, whither it resorts in the spring as early as the rigors of the 

 Arctic winter will allow. What few birds winter in southern Hud- 

 son Bay and the region of the Great Lakes, migrate across Ungava 

 and through Hudson Straits to the Atlantic coast; but the -main 

 migration route is northward along the seacoast following the open 

 leads in the ice with the first migration of the eiders. Kumlien 

 (1879) says: 



This gull is the first bird to arrive (at Cumberland Sound) in the spring. 

 In 1878 they made their appearance in the Kingwah Fjord by the 20th of April. 

 It was still about 70 miles to the floe edge and open water.; still, they seemed 

 to fare well on the young seals. 



At Ivigtut, Greenland, according to Hagerup (1891), "some, 

 chiefly young birds, remain over winter. An old bird, in complete 

 summer dress, was shot on the 20th of March." In Alaska, also, this 

 species is the earliest migrant to arrive. Turner (1886) observes 

 that they arrive at St. Michael by the middle of April, "sailing 

 high in the air, almost out of sight. Their note, being the first inti- 

 mation of their presence, is always gladly welcomed as a sign that 

 the ice, farther south, is breaking up." Nelson (1887) says: 



They wander restlessly along the coast until the ponds open on the marshes 

 near the sea, and then, about the last half of May, they are found straying 

 singly or in pairs about the marshy ponds, where they seek their summer homes. 

 Here they are among the noisiest of the wild fowl. 



