GREAT BLACK-HEADED GULL. 
63 
This Gull is often found inland at some distance from 
water, visiting swamps or even following the plough. 
Uest. — Generally placed on the ground, though instances 
have been known of its being built on a tree, even at seven or 
eight feet from the ground, or on a boat-house. Seebohm 
states that he has found nests floating on the water, sometimes 
slight, at other times quite substantial structures, as big as 
Coots’ nests. “ On the Lower Danube,” he writes, “ the nests 
were also floating on weeds of various kinds, and were of good 
size. Although the colony was not a large one, the birds were 
demonstrative enough, crying loudly, sometimes a single Kak, 
at others Kak, Kak, frequently Kark, and occasionally Kak, 
Kark.” 
Eggs.— Two to three in number, varying greatly in colour, 
occasionally in the same clutch. Mr. Robert Read writes to 
me : — “ In the vast colonies in which these birds breed, one 
may find eggs of every size, shape, and colour, from pale 
spotless greenish-blue to deep brown, heavily marked with 
black blotches and spots. 1 have frequently found four, five, 
and six eggs in a nest, and on one occasion eight, but in most 
of these cases the produce is undoubtedly that of more than 
two or more females.” The most typical form of egg has the 
ground-colour dark olive or dark clay-brown, the spots being of 
all shapes and sizes, often forming confluent blotches of black 
or brown at the large end of the egg. Many of the overlying 
spots have a reddish tint, and the underlying markings being 
dusky-grey. Some varieties are bluish in ground-colour, 
others nearly white with minute spots, while in a few examples 
the ground-colour is a deep coffee-brown, on which the markings 
are scarcely perceptible. Axis, 2-0-2-3 inches ; diam., 1-4- 
I’SS- 
VI. THE GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL. LARUS MARINUS. 
Lams marinus, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 225 (1766); Macgill. 
Brit. B. V. p. 526 (1852); Dresser, B. Eur. viii. p. 427. 
pi. 604 (1872); B. O. U. List Brit. B. p. 189 (1883); 
Saunders, ed. Yarrell’s Brit. B. iii. p. 631 (1884) ; Seebohm, 
Hist. Brit. B. iii. p. 323 (1885); Saunders, Man. Brit. B. 
