146 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



All communications for this department 

 should be sent to the Department Editor, 

 Mr. Harry G. Higbee, 13 Austin Street, 

 Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Items, articles 

 and photographs in this department not 

 otherwise credited are by the Department 

 Editor. 



Remarkable Photographs of Gulls. 



BY E. H. MATERN, SANDUSKY, OHIO. 



Previous to my taking these pho- 

 tographs I had seen gulls only in the 

 siniimer, and at distances of three hun- 



A REMARKAliLY GRACEFUL POSE. 



dred to five hundred yards, but in Feb- 

 ruary of this year thousands of these 

 birds came to the wharfs at Sandusky. 

 Ohio, to feed on the offal thrown on 

 the ice from the fisheries. This pre- 



sented an opportunity to study their 

 character at close range. 



Contrary to my former belief that 

 these gulls were beautiful, peaceful 

 birds which seemed to quietly har- 

 monize with the placid summer settings 

 of lake and sea regions, I fovmd in real- 

 ity a lot of wild, screeching, quarrel- 

 some creatures making a scene grue- 

 some and repulsive, from which ema- 

 nated a great variety of uncanny 

 screams and noises. 



Soaring above at a great height (a 

 gull is graceful only while flying) they 

 would swoop down upon the barrelfuls 

 of offal as soon as the workmen had 

 thrown it on the ice and departed. 

 Grabbing ravenously right and lefl, 

 tbey swallowed huge mouthfuls, get- 

 ting their heads and bodies covered 

 with gore. It is almost impossible to 

 obtain an unblurred photograph at one 

 three-hundredth of a second, so rapid- 

 ly do their heads and mouths move in 

 the act of devouring as much as pos- 

 sible before it can be eaten by the 

 others. While gulping the food, they 

 continuously flap their wings, trying to 

 prevent others getting a share. Au- 

 thorities on the subject have stated 

 that they will eat two and three times 

 their own weight without intermission. 

 When the offal was entirely devoured 

 and only very big fish remained, only 

 the largest and strongest birds fed, and 

 at this stage of the feast many scenes 

 such as the following were witnesed, 

 all being acted at the same time in dif- 

 ferent ])laces on the ice. A large gull 

 humps himself up and, with the swag- 

 gering stride and all the characteristics 

 of some rough hiunan of the under- 

 world, will chase all the others to a 

 distance of forty feet from the fish he 

 is eating. These less powerful ones 

 then stand in a circle facing the fish 

 while he struts proudl}^ back to it with 

 his wings arched and his feathers 

 fluffed. Gazing around the circle he 



