ebs, and below that a white spot on both
webs, for an inch; the white, however, much encroached upon on the outer
part of the outer web by a margin of black. In No. 2, probably the older
bird, the first primary has the white tip and the white spot running
into each other, thus making the tip of the feather for nearly two
inches white, with only a slight patch of black on the outer web. On the
second primary of No. 1 the white tip is present, but no white spot; but
on the same feather of No. 2 there is a white spot on the inner web,
about an inch from the white tip; this would, probably, in a still older
bird, become confluent with the white tip, as in the first primary. I
have not, however, a sufficiently old bird to follow out this for
certain. In No. 1, the older bird, the pale grey on the lower part of
the feathers also extends farther towards the tip, thus encroaching on
the black of the primaries from below as well as from above. I think
these examples are sufficient to show that the white does encroach on
the black of the primaries as the bird grows older, till at last, in
very old birds, there would not be much more than a bar of black between
the white tip and the rest of the feather; and this is very much the
case with the tame ones I caught in Sark in 1866, and which are
therefore, now in the winter of 1879, twelve and a half years old; but I
do not believe that at any age the black wholly disappears from the
primaries, leaving them white as in the Iceland and Glaucous Gulls. The
Herring Gull is an extremely voracious bird, eating nearly everything
that comes in its way, and rejecting the indigestible parts as Hawks do.
Mr. Couch, in the 'Zoologist' for 1874, mentions having taken a
Misseltoe Thrush from the throat of one; and I can quite believe it,
supposing it found the Thrush dead or floating half drowned on the
water. I have seen my tame ones catch and kill a nearly full-grown rat,
and bolt it whole; and young ducks, I am sorry to say, disappear down
their throats in no time, down and all. They are also great robbers of
eggs, no sort of egg coming amiss to them; Guillemots' eggs, especially,
they are very fond of; this may probably account for there being no
Guillemots breeding in Guernsey or Sark, and only a very few at
Alderney; in fact, Ortack being the only place in the Channel Islands in
which they do breed in anything like numbers.

Professor Ansted includes the Herring Gull in his list, but only mar