20 
LAUGHING GULL. 
on the hind part of the head, provided the bird be a male. But should they 
be barren birds, the hood will he wanting , that portion of their plumage 
remaining as during winter, and although the primaries will be black, or 
nearly so, each of them will be broadly tipped, or marked at the end, with 
a white spot, which in some instances will be found to be fully half an inch 
in size ; yet the tail of these birds, as if to prove that they are adults, is as 
purely white to its extreme tip, as in those that are breeding; but neither 
the breast, nor the under wing-coverts, will exhibit the rosy tint of one in 
the full perfection of its powers. 
The males of all the Gulls with which I am acquainted, are larger than 
the females ; and this difference of size is observable in the young birds even 
before they are fully fledged. In all of these, however, putting aside their 
sex, I have found great differences of size to exist, sometimes as much as 
two inches in length, with proportional differences in the bills, tarsi, and 
toes ; and this, in specimens procured from one flock of these Gulls at a 
single discharge of the gun, and at different seasons of the year. The colour 
of their bills too is far from being always alike, being brownish-red in some, 
purplish or of a rich and deep carmine in others. As to the white spots on 
the extremities of the primary quills of birds of this family, I would have 
you, reader, never to consider them as affording essential characters. Nay, 
if you neglect them altogether, you will save yourself much trouble^ as they 
will only mislead you by their interminable changes, and you may see that 
the spots on one wing are sometimes different in size and number from those 
on the other wing of the same specimen. If all this be correct, as I assure 
you it must be, being the result of numberless observations made in the 
course of many years, in the very places of resort of our different Gulls, 
will you not agree with me, reader, that the difficulty of distinguishing two 
very nearly allied species must be almost insuperable when one has nothing 
better than a few dried skins for objects of observation and comparison ? 
The Black -headed Gull may be said to be a constant resident along the 
southern coast of the United States, from South Carolina to the Sabine river; 
and I have found it abundant over all that extent both in winter and in 
summer, but more especially on the shores and keys of the Floridas, where 
I found it breeding, as well as on some islands in the Bay of Galveston in 
Texas. A very great number of these birds however remove, at the 
approach of spring, towards the Middle and Eastern Districts, along the 
shores of which they breed in considerable numbers, particularly on those 
of New Jersey and Long Island, as well as on several islands in the Sound. 
They constantly evince a dislike to rocky shores, and therefore are seldom 
seen beyond Massachusetts, in which state indeed they are exceedingly rare. 
None were observed by any members of my party on the Magdalene 
