BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 429 
vicinity of the Solway, cannot be claimed as a Dumfries- 
shire occurrence ; but Mr. W. Nichol writes me that he 
saw a Little Gull off our shore on September 3rd, 1907. It 
is noteworthy that the species is regarded as a casual 
migrant in winter and spring on the English side of the 
Solway Firth : and it is therefore possible that it may 
have occurred on other occasions off our coast, but without 
having being recorded. 
A Little Gull shot in the autumn of 1824 on the shore of 
the Solway Firth was presented by Mr. Neill to the 
Edinburgh Museum, and was said to be the first Scottish 
specimen.* It cannot now be traced, and there is no 
evidence to show that it was obtained in Dumfriesshire, it 
being presumably the same bird as that described in the 
Memoirs of the Werner ian Natural History Society as shot 
in Galloway by Lieutenant McCuUoch, Barholm House.! 
This species breeds in colonies from Denmark eastwards, 
in Finland and Russia to the Urals and across temperate 
Asia, and is found on passage and in winter on the waters 
of Europe as far south as the Mediterranean, north Africa 
and the Black Sea. It is an irregular visitor to the southern 
and eastern shores of England, being more rarely recorded 
from the west and north. 
THE BLACK-HEADED GULL. 
Larus ridibundus, Linnaeus. 
Local name — Peewit-Gtjll. 
A common resident, breeding inland in certain localities. 
The trivial name of this species is certainly a misnomer, for 
however black its head may appear at a distance, it is in 
* Hist. Berwick. Nat. Club, Vol. VI., p. 84, 
t Mem. Wern. Nat. Hist. Soc, 1826, Vol. V., p. 578. 
