THE COMMON GULL. 
353 
float on the waves their busy feeding-time is when the tide 
ebbs. Minute Crustacea (often Iclotece) form the bulk of their 
food. The contents of the stomach of one bird killed in Belfast 
Bay, were about fifty univalve mollusca, including Rissoa labiosa 
(fine specimens), Ii> ulvk, Lacuna quadrifasciata , and small 
Littonncc'j they also partake of marine plants. In addition to 
earth-worms and insect larvae found on dissection of birds killed 
inland, vegetable food, including husks of grain, frequently 
occurs : — a frog was found in one killed in November, near 
Wexford. A gentleman of my acquaintance induced a gull — 
that he believed to be of this species — to follow a steamer from 
Liverpool to the Isle of Man, merely by throwing towards it 
pieces of bread, which were invariably seized before they reached 
the water. 
Many notes descriptive of size, plumage, &c., at different 
seasons, and at the various ages of the bird, are before me, but 
it will suffice to select two or three of the most striking 
October %?>rd, 1833. — An adult Larus canus, killed to-day in Belfast estuary, had 
the plumage of the breast, belly, and under tail-coverts, faintly blushed with red, 
like the same portions of the L. ridibundus ; the tarsi were yellow, with the bluish- 
green colour of the approaching season, indicated only as yet at the folds of the 
tarsal joints. Of two other adult birds, obtained on the 10th of September and 
the 18th of October of the preceding year, the former had the tarsi, toes, and webs 
of feet of a uniform bluish ash-colour, and the latter of a delicate bluish flesh- 
colour, faintly clouded with pale yellow about the tarsal joints ; its bill was wholly 
bluish-green.* December 24 th, 1835. — Being struck with the appearance of the short 
bill of an adult L. canus , procured near Belfast, I measured it, and found this organ 
to be of similar dimensions with that of the L. brachycentrus, Rich, and Swains. 
February YZth, 1838. — On examination of two specimens of L. canus , shot to-day, 
the one adult, and the other immature (a bird of last summer), their entire length 
was the same, but the wings of the young bird, from the carpus to the end of the 
longest quill, were an inch longer than those of the old. The hill of the old bird 
was blackish- green, tipped with wax-yellow ; in the young, leaden-blue at base; 
blackish towards the point. The tarsi of the old were greyish-green ; of the young, 
bluish flesh-colour. 
Of the breeding-haunts of the common gull around the coast 
* Adult birds shot at Horn Head, in the last week of June this same year, had 
the tarsi and toes brilliant yellow: — they are described as being at this season 
“greenish-grey ” (Jardine), and “ dark greenish-ash” (Yarrell). 
VOL. III. & A 
