THE HEltRING-GULL. 
363 
rising and dipping over a dense mass of fry, which appeared at 
times breaking the surface of the water. * * * The great 
body of sea-fowl appeared so much engrossed with their predatory 
pursuits, as to neither attend to the reports of the gun, or notice 
the approach of the hooker, until the boat's bolt-sprit seemed 
almost parting this countless host of floating and flying plun- 
derers. * * * I fired, a solitary gull dropped in the water, 
and half-a-dozen wounded birds separated from the crowd and 
went screaming off to sea '' (pp. 147, 148) ; — the observation 
displayed here is as good as the description. The preliminary ac- 
tion to a play of gulls, as witnessed at the Gobbins in June 1847, 
was thus described to me : — -A few birds on detecting prey one- 
fourth of a mile from the cliffs gave a shrill cry, when instantly 
those seated on their nests, and others on wing about the cliffs, 
poured down like a snowy torrent to the spot, each uttering the 
same shrill cry as that which had called its attention to the place 
of prey. 
But this bird's mode of feeding is often commonplace enough. 
As already mentioned, it rejoices, even where fish are to be had for 
the catching, as at the Horn, in the tender flesh of young rabbits. 
In Belfast Bay it is accused — of what we know the great black- 
backed gull to be guilty — of attacking wild-fowl, more particularly 
wigeon, which have been severely wounded by the shooters. One 
was seen to attack a young cod-fish, of a few pounds weight, 
in Larne Lough, and on another occasion to strike at and cut, 
as if with a knife, a large sea-trout taken in a net. Mullet ( Mugil 
chelo) captured there are much injured and sometimes rendered 
unsaleable by pieces being eaten out of them by the herring-gull.* 
It eats fragments of horse-flesh, separated from the carcase, on 
which, however, it does not alight, like the crow. Most com- 
monly it feeds on minute univalve mollusca [Rissoa, Lacuna , 
Littorina ) and Crustacea, with occasionally vegetable matter. On 
this subject, I shall only add that a stomach examined by me 
contained the remains of two crabs ( Ilyas araneus) } one of which 
* This bird is accused in the Ayr Advertiser (Aug. 1849) on the authority of the 
proprietor of Itankinstone, parish of Coylton, of attacking and killing young lambs 
in the lambing season. 
