(_Larus argentatus_)
In its adult plumage, with the snow-white head, neck, and under-parts,
the delicate French grey back and wings, and the white-spotted black
tips to the larger flight-feathers, the silver gull, or herring-gull,
as it is more commonly called, is one of the most beautiful members
of a lovely tribe of birds. Indeed, whether swimming calmly on the
surface of the sea, or skimming over the crests of the waves borne on
their long and powerful pinions, and every now and then plunging into
the water to seize a fish or some floating morsel of food, gulls in
general are some of the most elegant and graceful of all birds, their
delicate colouring, in which grey and white, relieved to a greater or
less extent by black or chocolate, generally predominate, thus giving
a refinement to their whole appearance which is wanting in many birds
of brilliant plumage. Were it not that their cries, their tempers,
and their habits are by no means angelic, gulls might well have been
selected as emblems of the angels.
The white and pale grey plumage, replaced in a few species by a wholly
white or cream-coloured livery, is, however, developed only in the
adults; birds of the year having the back and wings thickly mottled
with brown and dark grey, and the tail black, while the head and neck
are wholly brown; the beak, moreover, in the species forming the
subject of the Plate, being black instead of orange. From this we learn
that gulls are descended from birds with relatively dark plumage, which
may perhaps have been dwellers on the land; and if this be so, these
beautiful birds evidently acquired their present type of colouring
only when they took to a life on the ocean wave. In any case, the pale
livery of the adult gull must be regarded as a special adaptation to
its mode of life; such a garb being the one which harmonises best with
the foam-flecked waves of the waste of waters.
The herring-gull closely resembles in colouring the common gull (_Larus
canus_), and like that species is abundant on the British coasts, or,
for that matter, on the Thames at London Bridge or the ornamental water
in St. James’s Park in winter. It is, however, a much larger bird,
attaining a length of about 22 inches in the case of adult males.
This species, moreover, is much less intolerant of heat than the common
gull; and while the former is compelled to wing its way to the more
northern coasts for the breeding-season, the herring-gull, like the
kittiwake, nests by scores on the southern coast of England, wherever
conditions suitable to its habits exist. The kittiwake, it may be
mentioned, differs from other gulls by the absence of the hind-toe,
and is therefore referred to a genus by itself, under the appropriate
name of _Rissa tridactyla_. The only other species likely to be
confounded in the summer plumage, when the black-headed species have
donned their chocolate or black caps, is the greater white-winged gull
(_L. hyperboreus_), which differs by the paler tone of the plumage
generally and more especially by the feature to which it owes its name.
[Illustration]
The herring-gull is a wide-ranging species, met with on both sides of
the North Atlantic, extending eastwards to the White Sea, and in winter
as far south as the Black and Caspian Seas and the Mediterranean.
In America herring-gulls visit in summer the inhospitable coasts of
Labrador and Greenland, but in winter wander south to the genial
climate of the West Indies and Central America, where, in all
probability, they cross the continent to join a closely allied gull
inhabiting the Pacific. In Europe the southern breeding range of this
handsome species seems to be formed by the northern coasts of France.
Herring-gulls, where conditions are favourable, may be found nesting
on the coasts of the British Isles from the south of England to the
Orkneys and the Shetlands, as well as in Ireland, where they are the
most common and most widely spread members of their tribe in the
breeding-season. Sometimes only a few gulls nest in company, but in
other situations large colonies collect for breeding purposes; and it
is noteworthy that the breeding sites are always in the neighbourhood
of the shore and generally on tall cliffs.
Another noteworthy feature of the herring-gull is that the adult
livery is not assumed till the fourth year, in consequence of which an
unusually large number of birds in the speckled dress are always in
evidence.