334 
THE BIRDS OF HAMPSHIRE. 
Hawker's " Diary " tells us that on December 28th, 
1 847, he " had the luck (at Keyhaven) to get the very bird 
I had long tried, even with the great gun, a huge saddle- 
back gull, that was blown by the raging tempest into the 
marsh close by ; he measured 5 feet 3 inches, from tip to 
tip of wings. I once killed five at a shot of these huge 
monsters when a youth — but had never killed one since 
that olden time." 
The author of the "Letters of Rusticus" (1849), in 
describing his visit to the Freshwater Cliffs, saw " the great 
burgomasters, far, far above the summit, wheeling round 
and round, like eagles, and uttering continually their 
sonorous and piercing call." But we think, with More, 
that he must have been mistaken in the species. 
Dr. Cowper considers it very uncommon in the Island, 
but he noticed it off Shanklin in the hard winter of 1894-5. 
The specimen in the Winchester College Museum was 
obtained at Milford about the year 1899, and an immature 
example in the Alton Museum was captured at East 
Worldham in February, 1902. 
Mr. W. H. Turle has shot an adult bird at Newton 
Stacey in the winter. 
267. Larus ridibundus. Black-headed Gull. 
Peewit Gull. 
A resident, and common in certain districts, but now 
only nesting in one small colony within our borders. 
Pennant states ' that " Whitelock in his annals mentions 
a piece of ground near Portsmouth which produced to the 
» " British Zoology," Vol. IL, p. 190. 
