126 
WHERE BLACKHEADS BREED. 
|HERE is no more interesting and withal more beautiful 
sight than a breeding place of this elegant little gull. 
Such a one there is not far from Brigg, in Lincoln- 
shire, and thither, one bright morning in early May, 
I bent my steps, accompanied by a few friends. Long before 
one gets into the neighbourhood of the thick fir woods among 
which the ponds frequented by these birds are situated, little 
parties of gulls are to be seen following the plough and feeding 
greedily on the grubs and insects exposed by the ploughshare, 
or skimming through the air, no doubt carrying a supply of food 
to their already hatched and craving young. Arrived at the 
woods to which we were admitted by the courtesy of their 
owner, we became sensible of a confused sound, almost like the 
distant roaring of the surf on a savage and rock-bound coast ; 
this sound as we approached yet nearer resolved itself into the 
wild, harsh, yet somehow not unmelodious cry of thousands of 
angry birds. Someone was before us, and we hastened on 
between thick fir trees, past small tracts of more open land 
covered with heather and thick tussocks of coarse grass ; bushes 
of sweet-gale or bog-myrtle here and there showing the marshy, 
peaty character of the soil. 
The gulls had by this time discovered our party, and flew in 
rapidly increasing numbers above our heads, making the air ring 
with their cries. Some of them were hawking after flies almost 
as swallows do, or, to take an example from birds whose habit 
it is not to do so, like starlings or sparrows in hot, sunny 
weather in spring. The air above these warm, sheltered grassy 
rides, redolent of delicious piny odours, was clouded with gnats 
and other insects, and here the blackheads, with many hungry 
little ones to feed, had found a new source of provision. The 
ponds themselves were an extraordinary sight, as, when first we 
reached them, hundreds of gulls were sitting on the chain of 
grassy islands which lie in a sheltered hollow in the full glow of 
the afternoon sun ; the air was filled with thousands more, a 
perfect hurly-burly of fleeting forms and wild, wailing voices. 
One second after our arrival not a single gull was left sitting ; 
even a few, who having built their nests in two or three stumpy 
pine trees might imagine themselves safe, were fled. 
Besides the main colony on the islands and among the reeds 
on the borders of the large pool, there are two small off-shoots 
close by in the woods ; one in so soft and marshy a place as to 
be quite safe from intrusion. 
This year (1897) the water being considerably higher than 
usual, those gulls who breed in the reed-beds on the margin, 
have departed from their ordinary somewhat slovenly method of 
nest-building, and have collected large heaps of material — 
rushes, dry grass, &c. — on which to deposit their eggs ; one or 
two have even appropriated the vacated nest of a coot, and these 
