Part 76

Great Black-backed Gull.

Larus marinus.

Bill yellow; legs and feet flesh-colour; plumage as in the lesser black-backed gull. Length, thirty inches.

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Turner, who wrote on British birds three centuries ago, in describing the great black-backed gull, says that it was called ‘cob’ on the Kentish and Essex coast. It is curious to find that it is still known by this name in the same localities, where it is now very rare. In colour and appearance it closely resembles the lesser black-back, but exceeds it in size, and is nearly twice as heavy--it is, in fact, the largest of the gulls. It is also the rarest species in the British Islands; for although its breeding-sites are not few in Scotland, while others exist on the coasts of England, Wales, and Ireland, its colonies are very small compared with those of other species, and in many cases the breeding-place is occupied by a single pair. Its habits are similar to those of the herring and lesser black-backed gulls; but being so much larger and more powerful, it is more injurious to other sea-birds, whose nests it plunders of their eggs or young. It is also more oceanic, straying to a great distance from land in its search for dead animal matter floating on the waves--a veritable ‘vulture of the sea.’ Its nest is placed, as a rule, on the summit of an inaccessible rock on the coast, or on a small rocky island, and is carelessly formed of seaweed and grass. Two or three eggs are laid, greyish brown, sometimes tinged with olive, with dark brown spots distributed sparingly over the whole surface.

Black-headed Gull.

Larus ridibundus.

Bill and feet red; head and upper part of the neck blackish brown; mantle grey; all the rest, white; the under parts tinged with pink. The black on the head is lost in winter. Length, sixteen inches.

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The black-headed gull, if not the most abundant of its genus, is without doubt the most generally known, on account of its wide diffusion in the country, and of its habit of breeding in inland marshes. It remains throughout the year, most of the time frequenting the flat parts of the sea-coast, estuaries, and tidal rivers, where it is seen perpetually roaming up and down in search of the small fishes and crustaceans on which it feeds, and any dead animal matter cast up by the tide. In its winter dress it is almost impossible to tell this species from the common gull and kittiwake when they are seen together, as in size they are nearly alike, and the buoyant, leisurely flight and circling motions in the air are the same in all. But very early in spring the distinguishing mark and nuptial ornament of a black hood is assumed, after which there can be no mistake. And here I may remark that I differ from Howard Saunders when he says that, as the hood is not black, the bird should be called the brown-headed gull. Vernacular names of this kind are descriptive of the creatures as they appear to us when seen living in a state of nature; and at a distance of twenty or thirty yards, which is as close as a flying gull will come to a man, the hood certainly appears to be black.

In March the gulls withdraw to marshes and meres to breed. The breeding-place is usually in the neighbourhood of the sea, sometimes in an inland district. Year after year the same spot is resorted to, and it is known that some of the gulleries in this country have existed for centuries. One of the largest and best known in England is at Scoulton Mere, in Norfolk. Half a century ago 20,000 birds annually bred at this spot, but the colony has now diminished to less than half that number. A favourite site for the gullery is an island in a mere or swamp, and the nests are placed both on the ground and on clumps of rushes or tussocks of grass. Three or four eggs are laid, varying in ground-colour from olive-brown to pale green, blue, or salmon, blotched with black and dark brown. During the breeding season the birds seek their food over the surrounding country in marshes, meadow-lands, and fields that are being ploughed. Seebohm says: ‘So easily do they adapt themselves to changed circumstances, that they have already become used to the steam-plough. It is a very pretty sight to watch a party of these little gulls, looking snow-white in the distance against the rich brown of the newly turned-up soil, paddling amongst the clumsy clods with dainty, red-webbed feet, and continually lifting their white wings to balance themselves on the rough ground, reminding one of a group of angels by Gustave Doré.’ One suspects that Doré, being, like other artists, incapable of imagining the unimaginable, made use of gulls and such like as models for his angels.

This gull, like most of the Laridæ, is a vociferous bird, and his notes--short and rapid, like excited exclamations, or drawn out, guttural in tone, and inflected in various ways--often sound like laughter; hence the name of laughing gull, sometimes given to this species, and the specific name of ridibundus. To my ear it is like the guttural and extravagant laughter of the negro, rather than that of the white man.

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Besides the six species described, there are six others, belonging to the sub-family Larinæ (true gulls), which figure in the books as British species. One of these (the second on the list) is perhaps a regular visitor.

Ivory gull (Pagophila eburnea).--A circumpolar species; occasionally straggles to the British coasts.

Glaucous gull (Larus glaucus).--Circumpolar in its range; a winter visitor to the northern parts of the United Kingdom.

Iceland gull (L. leucopterus).--A rare winter visitor (to the north) from the arctic regions.

Great black-headed gull (L. ichthyaëtus).--A single specimen of this southern species was obtained many years ago in this country.

Little gull (L. minutus).--An irregular visitor from continental Europe.

Sabine’s gull (Xema sabinii).--A rare straggler from North America.

Common or Great Skua.

Stercorarius catarrhactes.

Upper parts mottled brown; shafts of the quills and tail-feathers white; under parts rufous-brown; bill, legs, and feet black. Length, twenty-five inches.

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Of skuas there are but six species, two of which inhabit the southern hemisphere, and breed on the confines of the antarctic regions. The others belong to the northern half of the globe, and range in summer to the arctic regions. These four are all claimed as members of the British avifauna, but only two species need be fully described in this work. The skuas are gull-like birds, very strong on the wing, and swift flyers; and, like the gulls, they have a variety of feeding-habits, and are both the vultures and hawks of the sea. In the skuas there is more of the hawk and not so much of the vulture. Their predatory habits, extreme violence in attack, and readiness to take and destroy their feathered fellow-creatures and toilers of the deep when the occasion offers, have won them a reputation among birds similar to that of a pirate among men--the lawless rover of the sea, who is without compunction, and whose hand is against every man. In shape and general appearance the skuas are gull-like; they differ chiefly from the gulls in the form of the beak, which is straight for two-thirds of its length, and for the rest curved into a hook, as in the raptorial birds; and in the form of the tail, which is cuneiform, with the two centre feathers projecting beyond the others. In the gulls the tail-feathers are of equal length; while the terns, at the other end of this order of birds, have sharply forked tails like the swallow.

The great skua, or bonxie, as it is called by the Shetlanders, is the largest of the family. Except during the breeding season it is a solitary bird, oceanic in its habits, roaming far and wide over the waters in quest of food, its visits to land being restricted to rocky island coasts. Like the marine gulls, it feeds on dead fish found stranded or floating on the water, and on dead animal matter of all kinds, and also catches fish by pouncing on them as they swim near the surface. But it prefers to watch the movements of the other fishing-birds, which it follows and associates with to rob them of their prey. The herring-gull and lesser black-back may be frequently seen pursuing a tern or kittiwake to take from it the fish it has just captured; but these would-be robbers are not very successful--the chased tern, or small gull, in most cases proves too quick for them. These are like the merest mock chases and playful interludes in the day’s work compared with the sudden, furious onslaught of the bonxie. The swiftest gull or tern cannot escape from him; he can turn as quickly as a swallow, and keep close to his victim in all his doublings, until the chased bird in his terror disgorges the fish he has just swallowed. The skua stays his flight to pick up the falling morsel, and the chase is over. Besides robbing the birds of their prey, he is also a bird-killer, making his deadly attacks on the sickly or wounded, and on the young in the breeding season.

The great skua breeds in the Shetlands, but the birds have now been reduced to a few pairs, chiefly owing to the persecution of collectors. Every effort has been made to protect the birds in their two small colonies on Unst and Foula, but it is scarcely to be hoped that this insignificant remnant will continue to exist many years, when we consider that the childish and contemptible craze of eggshell-collecting is very common, and that many collectors do not hesitate to steal, or to bribe others to steal for them, the eggs they desire to have in their cabinets.

About April the surviving birds return to their ancestral breeding-grounds and make their simple nests, composed of a few twigs or a little dry grass, in a slight hollow in the ground. The two eggs laid vary in ground-colour from pale to dark buffish brown, and are spotted with dark brown, with greyish brown underlying spots. They resemble the eggs of the herring-gull and lesser black-back.