BLACK-HEADED GULL. 
335 
owner forty pounds a year by the sale of pewits, or this 
species of gull." This probably refers to a colony which 
formerly existed on Pewit Island (locally called " Pewty 
Island ") in Portsmouth Harbour. Mr. Harting thinks 
that Pennant refers to Whitelock's " Memorials of English 
Affairs," and the colony would, therefore, have been in 
existence about Charles I.'s time. 
The following passages are in Gilbert White's Journal, 
March 13th, 1771 : — "Wild fowls on Wolmer Pond. Some 
large white fowls also. Qu. what? They had black 
heads." 
In a footnote : — " Upon examination it seems probable 
that the gulls which I saw were the pewit gulls or black- 
caps. Lams ridibundus. They haunt, it seems, inland pools, 
and sometimes breed on them. See Brit. Zoology." 
On December, 1771 : " One pewit gull at Wolmer." 
When White visited his brother Henry at Fyfield he 
used to notice gulls in the Itchen valley, which were pro- 
bably the same species in their winter plumage. 
Thus on November 15th, 1783, on his return from 
Fyfield, he writes : — " Sea-gulls abound on the Alresford 
streams ; they frequent those waters for many months in 
the year." And on December 2nd, 1786 :— " Several white 
gulls, as usual, in the stream beyond Alresford." 
It is evident that these gulls did not nest at Wolmer in 
White's time, or he would have discovered the fact. 
At the present time the bird is most abundant on our 
Dorsetshire borders, in which county the neighbourhood of 
Poole has been long known as a favoured nesting place, 
and it is somewhat remarkable that no colony was known 
on Qitx side of the boundary until about the year 1904, 
when a small settlement was discovered by Mr. J. Hamilton 
Leigh in a bog close to the Avon, between Matchams and 
