OCT. 1906. 
HERRING GULL AND CASPIAN TERN. 
133 
At this season of the year there was no rivalry for mates and 
the fights that were frequently occurring were from petty causes 
only. None were severe or long continued and consisted mostly 
in one taking another unaware and pulling its tail or wing 
feathers. Occasionally a face to face encounter occurred, and 
in these the attempt seemed to be to grasp the opponent by one of 
the mandibles and drag him about. In these clinches one bird 
had the other by its upper mandible and was itself seized by the 
lower one. Which hold was considered the preferable I could 
not determine. The larger young were frequently fighting among 
themselves and were addicted rather to quick thrusts with their 
beaks than to pulling. Several times I saw clashes between fully 
grown and half grown birds, in which the latter were victorious. 
I imagined that a sort of chivalry kept the adults from fighting 
as hard as they might have done were their opponents larger, but 
the young were noticeably quicker and more savage in their 
thrusts. 
It was with much regret at the fragmentary nature of my work 
and at the many unsolved problems of larine sociology which I 
must abandon, perhaps forever, that I discarded my mantle of 
invisibility by stepping out of the tent, and amid the frantic 
shrieks of nearly a thousand panic stricken gulls took my de- 
parture. 
LITERATURE QUOTED. 
1844. Audubon, John James. 
The Birds of America, Vol. VII, pp. 165-166. 
1884. Baird, Brewer and Ridgway. 
The Water Birds of North America, Vol. II, p. 284. 
1874. Coues, Elliott. 
Birds of the Northwest, p. 632. 
'06. Finley, Wm. L. 
Home Life in a Gull Colony. 
In American Magazine, Vol. 62, No. 2 (June), pp. 153- 
162. 
'06. Fisher, Walter K. 
Birds of Laysan and the Leeward Islands, Hawaiian 
Group. 
In Bulletin of U. S. Fish. Comm., Vol. XXIII, Part 
III, p. 788. 
