Ornithological biography, Vol. 4 (of 5) : $b An account of the habits of the birds of the United States of AmericaAudubon, John James
Science
Ornithological biography, Vol. 4 (of 5) : $b An account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America
Audubon, John James
Birds -- North America
This species breeds, according to the latitude, from the 1st of March
to the middle of June; and I have thought that on the Tortuga Keys,
it produced two broods each season. In New Jersey, and farther to the
eastward, the nest resembles that of the Ring-billed Gull, or Common
American Gull, _Larus zonorhynchus_, being formed of dried sea-weeds,
and land plants, two and sometimes three inches high, with a regular
rounded cavity, from four and a half to five inches in diameter, and
an inch and a half in depth. This cavity is formed of finer grasses,
placed in a pretty regular circular form. I once found a nest formed as
it were of two; that is to say, two pairs had formed a nest of nearly
double the ordinary size, and the two birds sat close to each other
during rainy weather, but separately, each on its own three eggs. I
observed that the males, as well as the females, thus concerned in
this new sort of partnership, evinced as much mutual fondness as if
they were brothers. On the Tortugas, where these Gulls also breed in
abundance, I found their eggs deposited in slight hollows scooped in
the sand. Whilst at Galveston, in Texas, I found their nests somewhat
less bulky than in the Jerseys, which proved to me how much birds are
guided in these matters by differences in atmospheric temperature and
locality.
I never found more than three eggs in a nest. Their average length is
two inches and half an eighth, their greatest breadth a trifle more
than an inch and a half. They vary somewhat in their general tint, but
are usually of a light earthy olive, blotched and spotted with dull
reddish-brown and some black, the markings rather more abundant towards
the larger end. As an article of food, they are excellent. These gulls
are extremely anxious about their eggs, as well as their young, which
are apt to wander away from the nest while yet quite small. They are
able to fly at the end of six weeks, and soon after this are abandoned
by their parents, when the old and young birds keep apart in flocks
until the following spring, when, I think, the latter nearly attain the
plumage of their parents, though they are still smaller, and have the
terminal band on the tail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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