YOUNG HERRING-GULLS IN THE GREY PHASE OF PLUMAGE.
In their dull grey plumage the young of all gulls are very unlike the adults.
Gulls are larger and heavier birds than terns, with longer legs, and shorter, thicker beaks. Furthermore, with one exception, the tail is never forked. Like the terns, gulls generally breed in colonies, and these are often of large size. Young gulls, when newly hatched, are quite active. Later, when their feathers have grown, they are found to wear a dress quite different from that of the parents. Sometimes the adult plumage is gained at the end of the first year of existence, sometimes not until after the third year. Gulls feed on everything that comes in their way, from fish caught swimming at the surface of the sea to worms picked up at the plough-tail.
One of the commonest and best known of all the gulls is perhaps the species known as the Black-headed Gull, which has become so common in the heart of busy London, where hundreds may be seen, during the winter months, flying up and down the river, or wheeling about over the lakes in the parks. The black-headed gull receives its popular name on account of the fact that, like some terns and some other gulls, in the spring, the feathers of the head suddenly acquire a sooty-black colour: all trace of this is lost in the winter, save for two patches, one behind each ear.
Photo by W. F. Piggott] [Leighton Buzzard.
STONE-CURLEW, OR THICK-KNEE.
The plumage so closely resembles the sandy soil on which the bird lives that concealment is easily effected by crouching close to the ground.
The eggs of this bird are collected in thousands each spring, and sold in London and other markets as plovers' eggs. As many as 20,000 have been taken in a season from the extensive gullery at Scoulton Mere, in Norfolk.
Three or four eggs are laid in a nest of rushes, which is always placed on the ground in marshy and often inaccessible spots.