358 
LARIDiE. 
about the face of the cliffs ; but as jackdaws likewise build there,, 
the evidence is insufficient for the conviction of the gulls : — it is 
not, however, improbable that they may occasionally pick up grain. 
On examining the stomach of one bird shot in a field here, I 
found it, with the exception of a little vegetable matter, filled with 
terrestrial coleopterous insects. 
1833-1842.— At the noble range of headlands from about Ben- 
gore eastward of the Giant’s Causeway to Downhill, herring-gulls 
generally build, where the upper portion of the face of the cliffs 
presents here and there a little ledge on which a nest can be placed 
— in the seasons when I visited Pairhead, the grandest of all the 
headlands, they did not nidify there. About Carrick-a-rede, and 
the adjacent Sheep Island, the basaltic and chalk cliffs were 
selected indiscriminately for their nests, and the White Cliffs (as 
they are called) of the latter rock, west of Dunluce, displayed 
many of them in 1833. Their nests here are very large, and I 
have been surprised to see some near the Causeway constructed of 
small sticks, or thick stems of heather, either of which it would be 
difficult to obtain in quantity suited to the purpose. Viewed as 
we sail past the Causeway headlands, these birds have an elegant 
appearance, dotted over the black and sterile faces of the cliffs, 
where an occasional little ledge affords room for a nest ; but it 
must be said that they look only coldly beautiful, in comparison 
with what they do at some other localities, as about the cliffs near 
the Temple at Downhill, where the rocks, though little more than 
lichen-covered — yellow and grey of various tints — are with occa- 
sional tufts of herbage, many-hued, and present a warm and fur- 
nished aspect. Here the gulls with their full snowy breasts look 
beautiful and in keeping with all around, as they are perched about 
or reposing on their nests. 
The kittiwake does not breed at any of the localities which 
have just been mentioned in connection with the herring-gull ; 
but in the island of Rathlin, we are told that the latter “ occupied 
the summits of the cliffs tenanted below by the kittiwake. Their 
nests, like those of the common gull, were placed far beyond reach, 
except by lowering a man by a rope. Besides being found on the 
