COMMON GULL. 
73 
backed Gull on the Fame Islands, Ailsa Craig, &c., and such 
appears to have been the experience of Mr. Saunders and other 
naturalists. The nest is often slight, but is occasionally a 
bulky structure of grass and seaweeds, with a lining of finer 
grass and a few straws or stalks of the sea-campion. It is 
placed on a slope of a cliff or on the grass near the edge of 
the latter, sometimes in a hollow of the ground in the low- 
lands or in the crevice of a rock. In America it is known to 
build in trees or bushes. , , i ^ , 
Ego-s—Two or three in number, generally the latter, and vtiy 
similar to those of the Lesser Black-backed and Common 
Gulls There is, however, a greater variation in the eggs ot 
the Herring-Gull than in those of the two last-named species, 
and a very beautiful reddish variety is found near Vardo in the 
north of Norway, which Seebohin believed to be the egg of the 
Glaucous Gull. On this point, however, Mr. Henry Pearson 
and Mr. Edward Bidwell have made some remarks in the 
“ Ibis” for 1894 (p. 236). They procured some of these red 
eo-gs themselves in Northern Norway, in a district where there 
wem no Glaucous Gulls. They write “ The natives ascribe 
them to the Herring-Gull and say that, however large the 
colony may be, the red eggs are never found m more than one 
nest in the colony.” . ^ 
The ground-colour varies in the same way as in the eggs ot 
the Lesser Black-backed Gull, but the Herring-Gull rarely seems 
to lav eggs of the dark chocolate type. As, however, this is 
sometimes the case, it may be said that the eggs of the two 
species are so similar that there is no character by which they 
can be distinguished, and that too much care cannot be taken in 
their identification. Axis, 2-6-3 -05 inches; diam., 1-85-21. 
IX. THE COMMON GULL. LARUS CANUS. 
Larm canus, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 224 (1766); Macgill. Brit. 
B. V. p. 57 S (1852) ; Dresser, B. Eur. via. p. 381, pl- 600 
fi87^); B. O. U. List Brit. B. p. 189 (1883); Saunders, 
ed Yarrell’s Brit. B. iii. p. 613 (1884); Seebohm, Hist. 
Brit. B. iii. p. 316 (1885); Saunders, Man. lint. B. p. 655 
(1889); Lilford, Col. Fig. Brit. B. part xx (1891;; 
Saunders, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxv. p. 277 (1896). 
