BONAPARTE’S GULL. 551 
blue, much paler than in africilla; hood slaty-plumbeous, with white touches on the 
eyelids; many wing-coverts white ; feet chrome-yellow, tinged with coral red; webs ver- 
million. Primaries finally :—The first 5-6 with the shafts white except at tip; first 
white, with outer web and extreme tip black; second white, more broadly crossed with 
black ; 3d to 6th-8th with the black successively decreasing. In winter no hood, but a 
dark auricular spot. Young :—Mottled and patched above with brown or gray, and 
usually a dusky bar on the wing; the tail with a black bar, the primaries with more 
black, the bill dusky, much of the lower mandible flesh-colored or yellowish, as are the 
feet. 
Habitat, North America. Casual in Europe. 
Common spring and fall migrant on Lake Hrie; less common and 
rather irregular in the interior of the State. 
Bonaparte’s Gull is perhaps the most numerous of all the Gulls in the 
interior of the State, where it sometimes appears in spring in consid- 
LARUS ATRICILLA Linneus. 
Laughing Gull. 
Larus atricilla, KirTLAND, Ohio Geolog. Surv., 1838, 166, 185.—-AUDUBON, B. Am., vi, 
1844, 152 (under L, zonorhynchus).—W HEATON, Food of Birds, ete., Ohio Agric. Rep. for 
1874, 575; Reprint, 1875, 15.—Cours, Birds of N. W., 1874, 650.—LANGDON, Cat. 
Birds of Cin., 1877, 18; Rovised List, Journ. Cin. Soc. Nat. Hist., i, 1879, 189; 
Reprint, 23. . 
Chroicocephalus atricilla, WHEATON, Ohio Agric. Rep. for 1860, 371, 379; Reprint, 1861, 
13, 21. 
Larus atricilla, Luynzus, Syst. Nat., i, 1766, 225. 
Chroicococephalus atricilla, LAWRENCE, Birds N. Am., 1858,850. 
Larus (Chrecocephalus) atricilla, Couns, Birds N. W., 1874, 650. 
Probably never identified as an Ohio bird. Audubon’s statement, quoted on page 547, on 
which Dr. Kirtland named this species as Ohioan, is contradicted by his other statements 
(B. Am., vii, p. 138): “I never met with them on the Mississippi, above New Orleans,” 
and (ib., p. 142): ‘‘ Up the Mississippi to New Orleans.” My own identificationin 1861, Iam 
convinced was an error, the specimen in question being philadelphia in breeding plumage. 
On submitting this matter with others to Mr. Robert Ridgway, he kindly favored me 
with the following, under date of March 31, 1881: 
‘“‘Asto the occurrence of L. atricilla and Sterna macrura, I do not know but that 
taking the character of the evidence into consideration, if would be best to expunge, 
both from the list. I know of no record which I could rely on for the occurrence of 
either of these species anywhere in the Mississippi or Ohio Valleys, not excepting my own 
for L. atricilla on the Wabash. Black-headed Gulls much larger than L. philadelphia have 
been repeatedly seen there, but they may have been L.franklini. Still, all the birds of 
this family are great wanderers occasionally, and there is of course a reasonable proba- 
bility of the occurrence, more or less often of both of these species far from their usual 
haunts. Since the publication of my Catalogue of Illinois Birds I have become ‘ autop- 
tically’ acquainted with Z. atricilla in a region where it abounds (coast of Virginia) and 
now more than ever doubt having seen it in Southern Illinois, L. franklint being more 
probably the species noticed.” 
