132 BULLETIN OF WISCONSIN NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. VOL. 4, NO. 4- 
it back and forth like a pendulum, brushing against the female's 
tail. She invariably raised hers to the left and he brought his 
down to the right. When coition was complete the female raised 
her neck and head straight upwards and the male caressingly 
rubbed his bill against hers and then jumped to the ground. 
A few gulls were still incubating. The weather was pleas- 
antly warm, though not hot, yet the sitting gulls, near enough for 
careful observation, kept their bills open most of the time, as does 
a bird suffering from the heat. Gulls standing about were not 
doing this. In these sitting birds the end of the tongue was curved 
upward, so that about an inch of it appeared rising from near the 
end of the lower mandible. In no other instances, whether 
screaming or doing anything else that required the mouth to be 
open, could the tongue be seen from a side view ; apparently lying 
passively between the lower mandibles. 
The gulls, adult and young, usually stood squarely upon both 
feet. It was very rarely that one was seen standing on one foot. 
Sleep seemed to occur perhaps a little more frequently during 
the warmer hours of the afternoon than at other times, though 
pretty evenly distributed through the twenty-four hours. The 
birds sometimes stood, but more frequently squatted on the ground 
and turned their heads over their backs and tucked them under 
their wing feathers. Sleep was of very short duration, as fights, 
panics and alarms of various sorts followed one another too 
closely to allow of unbroken repose for more than a few minutes 
at a time. The night that I spent among them there was less 
sleep than during the day. The sun set about half past seven ; but 
at eight o'clock the colony was as busy as ever fighting, making 
abortive nests and screaming. At ten minutes past eight the 
moon arose, and ten minutes later nearly all the gulls suddenly 
took wing in what I conceived to be a panic, until shortly after- 
wards I spied a large flock of them on the water in the direction 
of the moon. Later they worked around the island, so that I was 
between them and the moon, and I could then see that they were 
busily fishing. My notes continue up to a quarter of three, when 
I fell asleep with the gulls still on the water and noisy. When 
I awoke at twenty minutes after four the sun was up, most of the 
gulls were on the island and many young were teasing a few 
adults for breakfast. 
