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LABXDJS. 
bit of meat or bread from my hand. It shows great adroitness 
in seizing food on the wing, and I sometimes amuse myself 
by obliging it to do so, for on throwing a bit of bread into the 
air, the gull flies up, and always catches it before reaching the 
ground.” 
Mr. Selby notices “ the comparative rarity of the present 
species upon the Northumbrian coast, where, however, its place is 
amply supplied by the lesser black -backed gull” (p. 505). Sir 
Wm. Jardine, too, describes it as “ perhaps more local, scarcely 
so abundant,” as L. fuscus . Montagu remarks, though with- 
out naming localities, that “ there are fifty herring-gulls to 
one of the lesser black-backed, and five hundred at least, perhaps 
a thousand, to one of the larger black-backed gulls (Supp. Orn. 
Diet, under Herring-Gull). His observations, however, were 
chiefly made on the south-western and western coast of England. 
On all parts of the Irish coast which I have visited or had com- 
munications from, the black-backed species were in very limited 
numbers, compared with the herring-gull. In the north and east 
of Ireland, where the gulls have most frequently come under my 
own observation, there certainly is not one L . fuscus for a hun- 
dred, perhaps not for two hundred, of the L. argentatus . 
Around the whole maritime cliffs of Ireland, the herring-gull 
is, in the breeding season, the most common species, being much 
more widely distributed than the kittiwake ; generally a few of the 
lesser black-backed, and more rarely of the greater black -backed, 
nidify in its grandest haunts, still more seldom the common 
gull. I have never heard of the herring- gull breeding around 
the Irish coast elsewhere than on cliffs, except in the instance 
already mentioned, and never about fresh water; — the black- 
headed and lesser black-backed species only frequenting its vicinity. 
During winter also, the herring-gull is, at least next to the 
L. ridibundus , the most common species on such shores as are 
known to me ; and in some localities is more frequent than that 
bird. Indeed, when visiting different islands of Strangford Lough, 
on the 22nd of June, 1846, this was the only gull we saw all 
day, though it has no breeding-place near ; — a flock of about 
