SILVERY GULL. 



461 



lesser wing- coverts and scapulars the same as before described ; as also 

 the quill-feathers, but tinged with blue on the outer webs of the pri- 

 maries ; the tertials next to the body are very broad at the base, and 

 gradually narrower to a pointed tip ; these are of a glossy purple-black, 

 with a white stripe in two of them along the shaft, for one third of 

 their length from the tip ; one or two of the longest scapular feathers 

 that fall over these, are similar ; on each side of the base of the tail is 

 a large patch of white; the tail consists of fourteen feathers, the middle 

 ones dusky-black, with white margins, but the two centre have the 

 margins minutely speckled ; the rest are dusky -brown, with broader 

 margins of dirty white ; bill, irides, and legs, like the former. * 



SHRIKE. — A name for the Butcher Bird and Flusher. 



SILVERY GULL {Larus argentatus, Brunnich.) 



Larus argentatus, Gmel. Syst. 2. p. 600. sp. 18. — Silver Gull, Arct. Zool. 2. p. 533. 



C— I&.Supp. p. 70— Lath. Syn. 6. p. 375. 5 Less Black-backed Gull, Mont. 



Orn. Diet. — Larus marinus, Lath. Ind. Orn. 2. p. 814. 6. var. j3. — Herring 

 Gull, Lath. Syn. 6. p. 372. 3.— Flem. Br. Anim. p. 14. 



This species is greatly inferior in size to the Cobb, and rather 

 superior to the herring gull. It weighs about thirty-six ounces, and 

 rarely more ; length twenty-four inches ; bill yellow, with an orange 

 spot on the lower mandible ; size and shape like that of the herring gull ; 

 irides pale yellow ; orbits red orange ; head, neck, tail, and whole under 

 parts pure white ; back, scapulars, and wings dusky-black ; prime quills 

 dusky ; towards their ends black ; the point of the first is white, with 

 a black tip ; the second the same, with only a white spot in the black ; 

 the others very slightly tipped with white ; two or three of the scapu- 

 lars are also tipped with white ; legs yellow. 



No class of birds has occasioned more perplexity than the gulls, 

 from the length of time most of them are arriving to maturity in 

 plumage: the species have been greatly multiplied. But we shall 

 here again remark, that all the species we are acquainted with are, in 

 their first feathers, mottled all over with brown and white ; not to 

 be discriminated but by size. Many of these errors have now been 

 corrected. 



This congregates frequently with the herring gull, and breeds in the 

 same places, where we have seen them sitting on their nests ; but they 

 are not near so plentiful. On Romsey Island, in Pembrokeshire, this 

 and the herring gulls breed in great abundance ; but where we had an 

 opportunity of examining them very attentively, this was not near so 

 plentiful as the other species. The proportion was certainly not more 

 than one in twenty, which must invalidate every idea of its being the 

 male of the other species. 



