Black-headed Gull (Larus ridibundus).—Seen at two places; a few perhaps breeding on the shore of a voe near Weisdale. There is a colony on a rocky knoll in the middle of a loch in another neighbourhood. This little island has steeper sides than is usual, and a luxuriant growth of Luzula. On 21st May there were about twelve nests, empty, or with one, two, or three eggs. The eggs in each nest agreed in colour.
Common Gull (L. canus).—Common, and nesting in many places, on the low rocky brows of the Scalloway islands, in swampy lowlands near Whiteness, and at the tide-edges at Littlure, near Walls. Most of the lakes of the Walls district had a few pairs, the characteristic sites for the nests being little knobs of rock or boulders rising a foot or two above the water-level, with a hollow on the top just large enough to accommodate a single nest. Few of these by the end of May contained their full complement of eggs. In a little shallow pond on the Chingies, Scalloway, were nests similarly placed. The cry of the Common Gull, a kind of harsh croak, is very characteristic.
Herring Gull (L. argentatus).—Common on the coast; we did not observe it nesting inland. Innumerable Herring Gulls, however, were resting on the Loch of Cliff. Opposite the Rusna Stacks, Walls, we saw nests with eggs on 23rd May; at the end of the month others on the islands at Scalloway had also their complement.
Lesser Black-backed Gull (L. fuscus).—Common. A few pairs nesting on Hildasay, both on a loch which that small island contains and on its coast; others on the cliffs near Walls. In many of the lakes of the Walls district are islands on which this species was gathered, sometimes in large numbers, for nesting purposes. These islands had lost the ling which carpeted the lake-sides and other islets, and were richly verdant, and in some cases delightfully adorned by flowering marsh-marigolds, at this season almost the only conspicuous wild flower of Shetland. (On verdure produced by Gulls, see Mitchell, 'Birds of Lancashire,' p. 253, second edition.) On one or two of these spots which we visited on 23rd May nesting operations had only just commenced; we saw no eggs during our stay.
Great Black-backed Gull (L. marinus).—Odd pairs breeding on some of the Scalloway islands. We saw (across a chasm)
