BIRDS OF THE RAVENGLASS GULLERY, 165 
the end of the first week of July there was not a tithe of the 
Gulls that had been on the sandhills a fortnight before. The 
young were then scattered over the fields in all directions, and 
many, both old and young, had no doubt left the neighbourhood 
altogether.* 
My first visit to the gullery was on June 21st. Wherever I 
went there was a cloud of shrieking Gulls above me, and in 
whichever direction I looked the sandhills and shore were thickly 
dotted over with standing or brooding birds. The young ones— 
many thousands of them—were in all stages of growth, from 
those struggling to free themselves from the egg-shell to those 
which could fly well. In every bare sandy hollow there were 
scores of young in down, and the broad stretches of the beach 
were covered by them. As soon as they saw me, such as were 
unabie to fly would scuttle away for shelter into the marram- 
grass and nettles, and crouch there. Nests still containing eggs 
—one, two, or three, principally three—were to be counted by 
the thousand. They were built in a variety of situations; some 
among the nettles and coarser herbage, but most among the 
marram-grass, some on the flats between the dunes, and others 
on their crests. In favoured sites the nests were crowded so 
thickly as to overlap. Marram-grass was the chief nesting 
material, but straw, seaweed, sticks, and other jetsam from the 
beach had been used in some nests, especially those on the 
dunes fringing the shore. The mortality in gulleries is always 
sreat, and many dead adults and more young were scattered over 
the whole of the nesting area. 
The Sandwich Tern breeds at Ravenglass in steadily increasing 
numbers.+ The keeper, who is constantly on the ground during 

take Sprats from my fingers or head, and this in mild open weather when 
they would not be feeling the pinch of hunger. 
** The Black-headed Gull does not nest in the Isle of Man, and is practi- 
cally absent from the coast during the breeding season. By the end of June 
old birds—hailing perhaps from Ravenglass—had arrived in some numbers, 
and on the 30th I saw two birds of the year in Castletown Harbour. 
+ The date of the founding of the Ravenglass colony is uncertain. The 
pioneers probably came from Walney Island, where there was at one time a 
flourishing colony. In 1885 there were about seventeen pairs at Ravenglass 
(Macpherson and Duckworth, ‘ Birds of Cumberland,’ p. 166). 
