172 BULLETIN 113, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



My field notes describe the ordinary note of this gull as a soft 

 " Krrruk " or a low clucking call. This is sometimes varied with a 

 louder and more plaintive cry, sounding like " pway " or " pwa-ay," 

 which is rather musical; and when much excited or alarmed, as on 

 their breeding grounds, it utters loud, shrill, piercing screams. Mr. 

 Thomas Miller, in a letter to Major Bendire, described its notes 

 as follows : 



While feeding, their call Is a shrill "Kuk Kuk Kuk Kuk " repeated inces- 

 santly, varied at times with their characteristic "Weeh-a Weeh-a," the first 

 syllable prolonged and uttered with the rising inflection. This is the call 

 most commonly heard, and while flying home from feeding about the only 

 one they use. In visiting the breeding place they hover over you and repeat 

 this call with a mournful cadence, as if imploring you not to molest their 

 nests. Then their cries are incessant and can be heard a long way off. On 

 bright sunny days in May and June they soar in the air to a great height, so 

 high as to be scarcely visible, when they swoop back and forth crying " Weeh-a 

 Weeh-a Weeh-a Po-lee Po-lee Po-lee Po-lee." The last notes are invariably 

 uttered shorter and quicker than the first. They will fly thus all day long 

 and the note " Po-lee Po-lee " is only heard when they are soaring at a great 

 height during fine weather. This note is not unlike that heard on the Scottish 

 moorlands while the whaup or sickle bill curlew is circling around the lonely 

 traveler. 



Mr. J. W. Preston (1886) says that "at intervals they utter a 

 shill, clear cry muoh resembling the call of the marbled godwit. 

 Their ordinary note is a loud, mewing cry, uttered in a short, 

 jerky, impatient manner, somewhat resembling the mewing of a 

 cat. This call is constantly kept up, and when they congregate a]t 

 their rookery in the evening the din is deafening, and may be heard 

 all night during the mating season, which begins about May 1 and 

 lasts until the 15th of the month. Eegularly at dark a large 

 portion of the flock took their noisy way to the open lake, where 

 they remained on the water until light." 



Franklin's gulls are not only highly gregarious among themselves, 

 nesting in compact colonies of immense numbers, but they are de- 

 cidedly sociable toward other species, especially on their breeding 

 grounds. In the sloughs where they breed they have for intimate 

 neighbors large numbers of yellow-headed blackbirds, black terns, 

 coots, rails, grebes, canvasbacks, redheads, and ruddy ducks, with all 

 of whom they seem to be on good terms. They seem to be particu- 

 larly intimately associated with eared grebes. There is almost always 

 a colony of these grebes in or near every Franklin's gull colony, and 

 often the nests of the two species are closely intermingled. Mr. Her- 

 bert K. Job has a photograph of a Franklin's gull eating the eggs in 

 an eared grebe's nest, but I doubt if they regularly disturb the nests 

 of their neighbors to any great extent, although nest-robbing is a 



