Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/265

Rh at the recent Glasgow meeting of the British Association. I had the pleasure of listening to this paper, which is printed in extenso in the British Association Report for 1901, p. 378. The young Gulls were L. ridibundus. Prof. Thomson says:—"They [the newly-hatched Gulls] pecked at the cotton-wool of their beds" (loc. cit. p. 379); and further on he says again: "During the first two days they got some of the cotton-wool of their beds into their mouths, but this was inevitable" (p. 380). Why "inevitable"? The Professor evidently attributes this to infantile blundering, but may it not be considerably nearer the mark to suggest that it was due to a longing for the dry fluffy moth-food their hereditary instinct told them they should be provided with? I should have made my suggestion when it occurred to me on the spot, but the formidable row of grey beards and bald heads that clustered round the President of Section D was too awe-inspiring to a mere listener on the back benches.

A further but greatly less marked modification of the habits of this species may also be described here. During those rather infrequent bright and very still days we have in September and October, when insects rise high into the air, Jackdaws and Starlings combine to hunt them, gliding backwards and forwards, Swallow-like, for hours at a time. Always within my recollection such gatherings have occasionally included one or two Blackheaded Gulls, but nowadays one never sees them without the Gulls. And the latter may often preponderate in numbers. On such autumn days—days which, it may be said, are invariably characterized by strong migration movements—the principal insect that is being pursued is a large black species of Chironomus.