408 
THE GULL. 
to twenty thousand, and more might he taken occasionally ; 
for instance, thirty thousand would not have been too large a 
proportion for this Spring (1837), it having been a wet one. 
Notwithstanding this drawback, the number of these annual 
visitants appears to increase. They feed themselves and their 
young on week days by following the ploughman’s heels, 
pouncing fearlessly upon the grubs and worms turned up by 
the share, so that they are great favourites with all the 
farmers within six or seven miles of the mere. On Sundays, 
when the ploughs are not at work, they betake themselves 
to the meadows and dry pastures, in search of similar food, 
foraging over a whole field with the greatest regularity and 
order. 
The eggs are very good eating : the yolk is considered by 
many equal to the Plover’s, hut the white less transparent 
and gelatinous. The young birds being web-footed, take to 
the water as soon as hatched, but are fed by the old ones till 
they can fly; when nearly fledged, they are not bad food, 
though not often brought to table at present. The young 
birds for the first year are of a brownish grey colour, with 
partial patches of white, but have neither the black cap, nor 
black tips of wings, nor the delicate white of the breast, nor 
the slate-coloured back and wings, which they return with in 
the following year. They remain till the young birds are 
strong enough for a long flight, when they assemble in 
detachments on an open field in the evening, and go off in 
the night. The first detachments retire about the end of 
July, and they almost entirely disappear in the course of 
August. 
To what regions the great body resort for their Winter 
abode is not exactly known ; probably they separate, and 
parties linger in particular spots, as in the Autumn they 
appear in great abundance on the coast of Carmarthen and 
Glamorganshire, about the mouths of rivers. In Northum- 
berland they are also common, and for many years have 
attached themselves to a large pond at Pallinsburn, the seat 
of A. Askew, Esq., where their habits and punctuality are 
similar to the account above given, and from whence (in con- 
