THE BACK-HEADED GULL.
more plentiful—right up as far as the Shetlands. In Ireland it is the commonest species of its family.
To the farmer the services of this Gull are invaluable. Like the Rook it follows the plough, devouring vast quantities of worms and grubs. It can capture moths and cockchafers on the wing, and will eat indeed almost anything, acting also like others of its congeners as a scavenger of the foreshores. Farming in districts near the coast benefits greatly from the services of these birds. They are partial to snails also, and as no Gull feeds on plants, seeds or fruits, a Gull in a garden, wing-clipped, is often kept as a useful pet.
This Gull is sixteen inches in length, that is almost as big as a crow. The beak is not strong, the point is curved downwards; the head a beautiful dark-brown. This colour extends to the throat. There is a white ring round the eyes. Neck and mantle a beautiful ashen-grey, throat, breast and underparts white, with pinkish tinge; outer primaries dark with white stripes. The upper parts of the wings are light grey; beak and legs carmine, also the irides and their borders; the toes are joined together by a web. The head becomes white in winter, the beak and feet lose their brilliant red colour and become flesh colour, and then brownish. It nests with others in settlements consisting sometimes of 3000 to 4000 nests. The nest is placed on broken reeds, turf clods, tufts of rushes; the bird, without much skill, makes a little heap, scratches a hollow in it, smoothes the inside, prepares a litter of dry rush and sedge leaves, and the nest is finished. The nests are placed close together. The clutch consists of two or three eggs, very rarely four, usually of a yellowish clay colour, marked, or regularly speckled with a dark shade.
USEFUL.
