BIRDS 423 



Besides the well-recognised gulleries, some other stations, 

 which seem equal in scenic attractiveness to the chief nurseries, 

 are utilised irregularly. Thus, these birds in dry seasons 

 build their nests on the sedge at Monkhill Lough ; occasionally 

 they nest at Crofton Hall, at Devoke Water, or at Seathwaite 

 Tarn. The open salt marsh seems an unlikely site for a colony; 

 yet in 1889 a detachment of the Sol way Flow birds, resenting 

 the loss of their nests, transferred themselves to the point 

 of Eockliffe marsh, where they built and nested. Unfortunately 

 their efforts to rear young in this situation were frustrated by 

 their eggs being swept away by high tides, but some birds 

 returned to the same salt marsh in 1890 and 1891. It has, in 

 fact, been utilised by a few pairs of this Gull at various times 

 within the recollection of Mr. Tom Duckworth, who, in company 

 with the late Mr. T. H. Allis, took eggs on Eockliffe marsh in 

 the period 1859-63, and also in 1870. It will have been 

 observed, from the foregoing remarks, that Larus ridibundus 

 nests in many parts of our faunal area, and this under widely 

 varied conditions of life, taking possession of rough ground on 

 the sea-board, as in Walney ; assembling in swarms among 

 estuary sandhills, as at Eavenglass ; sharing the grouse moors 

 with the more legitimate tenants on the coast or among the 

 hills, or, again, contenting itself with the more limited area of 

 some unimportant tarn in an agricultural region, where grass- 

 lands and root crops alternate with large fields of wheat. 



The nests vary in size and structure according to individual 

 taste ; some of them are scarcely larger than the nest of a Coot, 

 others are decidedly cumbrous piles. They are constructed of 

 bents, dry rushes, pieces of stick, and such other materials as 

 can conveniently be gathered together. I have never seen eggs 

 laid in March, but from the third week of April until the end of 

 July there is always a certain supply of eggs in one or other 

 colony. The earliest broods take wing in May, seldom before 

 the end of the month. A large proportion of eggs are hatched 

 in June. The Eavenglass colony breeds rather earlier than 

 some of the others, but the constant interference to which these 

 birds are liable renders it impossible to define the dates at 

 which the young mature with absolute precision. The old birds 



