THE BLACK-HEADED GULL. 
327 
So late as the 31st of May and 2nd of June, 1832, I observed 
flocks consisting of various numbers, not exceeding thirty, about 
the Lagan. 
On the 24th of July, 1838, I remarked many old birds accom- 
panied by their young of that season in the bay. In 1845 they 
were still earlier, a flock of about thirty, old and young, being 
seen there on the 19th of July, and on the 24th, about twice 
as many. At that locality, and in the tidal portion of the 
river Lagan opposite the Royal Botanic Garden, they gradually 
increased until the 8th of August, when their numbers were com- 
plete for the autumn. 
From the river Lagan they used to be wholly absent from the 
period of their retirement, late in the spring, until old and young 
returned in company. I was therefore surprised to see a flock of 
forty-nine fly high above the Lagan bridge early in the evening 
of the 15th of May, 1850, all adult birds, and followed by two 
or three smaller flocks proceeding seaward, in the same course, 
most probably to their breeding- haunt. Many adults, I was 
told, were daily observed in the bay from this time forward. 
On the 4th of June I remarked a number of old birds in a similar 
place in Lancashire ; — the marine sands about Eleetwood : and 
on the 2nd of July, about forty in that state of plumage appeared 
in a flock at a locality of the same nature between Drogheda 
and Dublin. Their wandering far from breeding-haunts, in the 
midst of the season, would therefore seem to be not unusual, un- 
less that such birds — like adult kittiwakes, hereafter to be men- 
tioned— do not increase their species. 
Plumage . — I shall give a selection from notes on this subject made in the vicinity 
of Belfast. 
1832. March 21 st and 1st of April. Out of a great number observed, not more 
than about one in twenty had the head black ; the others had it faintly mottled, or 
exhibited merely the black ear-spot of winter ;* the rest of the head being pure 
white. April 13 th. Of two which flew within a few yards of me, both having the 
* The other dark spot of winter plumage, being close to the eye, is not conspicuous 
like that above the ears. 
