No. 1
the fifth primary has a distinct white tip; the sixth also has a decided
white tip, and is much whiter towards the base, the difference being
quite as perceptible on the outer as on the inner web. The seventh has a
small spot of brown towards the tip on the outer web, the rest of the
feather being almost uniform pale grey, with a slightly darker shade on
the outer web, and white at the tip; the eighth grey, with a broad
white tip. In No. 2 the fifth primary has no white tip; the sixth also
has no white tip, and not so much white towards the base; the seventh is
all brown, slightly mottled towards the base, and only a very slight
indication of a white tip; and the eighth is mottled throughout. I think
it worth while to mention these two birds, as I have their exact dates,
and the difference of a year between them agrees exactly with young
birds which I have taken in their first feathers and brought up tame. I
may also add, with regard to change of plumage owing to age, that very
old birds do not appear to get their heads so much streaked with brown
in the winter as younger though still adult birds, as a pair which I
caught in Sark when only flappers, and brought home in July, 1866, had
few or no brown streaks about their heads in the winter of 1877-8, and
in the winter of 1878-9 their heads are almost as white as in the
breeding-season. These birds had their first brood in 1873, and have
bred regularly every year since that time, and certainly have
considerably more white on their primary quills than when they first
assumed adult plumage and began to breed. Probably this increase of
white on the primaries as age increases, even after the
full-breeding-plumage is assumed, is always the case in the Herring
Gull, and also in both the Lesser and Greater Black-backs, thus
distinguishing very old birds from those which, though adult, have only
recently assumed the breeding-plumage. I know Mr. Howard Saunders is of
this opinion, certainly as far as Herring Gulls are concerned. Besides
the live ones, two skins I have, both of adult birds, as far as
breeding-plumage only is concerned, are evidently considerably older
than the other. No. 1, the youngest of these,--shot in Guernsey in
August, when just assuming winter plumage, the head being much streaked,
even then, with brown, showing that though adult it was not a very old
bird,--has the usual white tip on the first primary, below which the
whole feather is black on both w