434 BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
was in Applegarth parish, though there are no reports at 
hand of the existence of any such colony in that neigh- 
bourhood at the present time. 
THE COMMON GULL. Larus canus, Linnaeus. 
Local names— Mewgull ; Mew; Sea-Maw; Mar; Blue- 
head ; Winter-Gtjll. 
" Bird of silver wing outspread, 
How thou mock'st me overhead, 
As thou floatest far up there 
On the buoyant evening air 
Giving forth thy sounds that seem 
Now a laugh and now a scream." 
David Dunbar. — " The Sea Gull [Larus canus). 
A common visitant from autumn to spring. 
If the poet had not expressly dedicated these lines to Larus 
canus I should have said that the gull which indulged in 
" now a laugh and now a scream " was the Black-headed Gull. 
The name, Common Gull, is most misleading, for though 
frequently seen in autumn and winter, it is certainly not the 
" common " gull of the county. In the Statistical Account of 
Scotland, there are several local references as to the appearance 
of the " sea-mew " inland, foretelling excessive rains or high 
winds ; and in the Hst of birds of the parish of Kirkmichael 
in 1792, the gull and the mew are catalogued distinctively.* 
Sir William Jardine, in a Ust of the birds of the parish of 
Applegarth and Sibbaldbie, wrote in 1832 : " The common 
gull (L. Canus) in autumn and winter frequent the pasture 
and plowed fields in considerable flocks ; the greater part, in 
the plumage which gives them the name of winter-gull."t 
In some years it appears more numerously than others, as 
* Sm. Acct. Scot., Vol. I., p. 61. 
t New Stat. Acct. Scot., Vol. IV., p. 182. 
