THE GULL FAMILY 317 



they will eat all that can be spared for them, and 

 forage for themselves as well. Nothing hurts them 

 but scrub-brooms and kicks, which luxuries are 

 provided at times for them. When a bird of either 

 species takes a piece of food from a child and cuts 

 its fingers in doing so, it is very apt to get repri- 

 manded ; and if this takes place too often, the Gulls 

 are apt to take a sad view of life and give matters 

 up — pine away in fact. 



Very few sea-birds give more pleasure to the 

 wandering naturalist than does the Common Gull, 

 that might, I think, be called the Lesser Silvery 

 Gull, for it favours the larger Herring Gull very 

 closely. 



To a certain extent this bird, although called 

 common, is local in its choice of habitat, for I have 

 seen Black-backed Cobs and Herring Gulls in 

 certain places in which I have not seen the so-called 

 Common Gull. 



Where large ploughed fields follow one another 

 down the uplands, close to the tide, everything 

 suits them admirably. It is a very pretty sight to 

 see them following the plough for the small deer 

 that they can pick up from fresh-turned furrows. 



I have watched Rooks, Dun Crows, Hoodies, 

 Jackdaws, Pewits, Starlings, and Gulls, the latter 

 in greater numbers than the others, in two large 

 fields, eighty acres in extent, close to the tide ; and 

 again within a couple of miles of it, on one upland 

 farm, when I was a boy. I have seen them after 

 they had filled their crops with mice that the plough 



