THE LESSER BLACK- BACKED GULL. 
373 
are believed not to build in company with the herring-gulls on 
the cliffs between Cork and Kinsale. This,, if correct, would 
agree with my own observation in the north of Ireland, that the 
lesser black-backed gull only frequents the greatest breeding- 
haunts of that species. Tor instance, it is found at the Gobbins, 
where from 1,000 to 2,000 pair of those birds nidify, but not one 
have I ever seen about a nest at the ranges of cliffs in the vicinity 
of the Giant's Causeway or Downhill, where the L. argentatus is 
more scattered and in much smaller numbers ; nor is it named as 
building in Eathlin. About Youghal, adult birds have been 
observed in the breeding-season. - * They nidify in the cliffs near 
Howth (county Dublin), and, as has been supposed, also at Lam- 
bay; but in the summer of 1849 none bred there. t 
I have never observed this bird so abundant anywhere in 
Ireland as at Lough Neagh, where from the people believing 
that it subsists on the Coregonus Pollan , it is called the pollan 
gull, or Lough Neagh herring-gull, from the names applied 
to this fish. When visiting the breeding-haunt of the black- 
headed gull and common tern at Barn's Island in this lake, on 
the 15th of June, 1833, we shot an immature bird of this kind 
and saw about thirty which kept aloof from the other species ; 
they were stationed on the very small detached rocks or heaps of 
upraised gravel, which stretch into the lake from the promontory 
occupied by their congeners. Our boatmen, and the serjeant 
in charge of Barn's Island, stated of their own knowledge, that 
this bird rarely bred here, but they had found its nests occasionally 
near the outer extremity of the present haunt of the black- 
headed gull : the eggs were known from those of the latter 
species by their superior size. I observed at Massareene deer- 
park bordering this lake, on the 23rd of September, 1834, not 
less than forty mature lesser black-backed gulls congregated to- 
gether on the beach; and remarked old birds about different 
parts of the lake again on the 29th of May, 1836, and 12th of 
the same month, in 1838. 
* Mr. R. Ball. 
f Mr. R. J. Montgomery. 
