The Herring or Harbor Gull 279 



only the refuse of shore and vessel but of cities as well, when the sea-going gar- 

 bage scows disgorge their loads 



Nature never creates a useless type, and even so wise a man as our scientific 

 and far-seeing Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was mistaken when he wrote of this 

 bird, 



"Such is our Gull; a gentleman of leisure, 



Less fleshed than feathered ; — bagged you'll find him such ; 

 His virtue, silence ; his employment, pleasure ; 

 Not had to look at, and not good for much." 



This verse is doubly surprising when you realize that our medical poet must 

 have daily seen the Gulls at work as scavengers in the nearby Charles river. 

 It is another warning about careful seeing, for to overlook an important point 

 is as misleading as to get the habit of seeing what you would like to see in nature, 

 rather than what is there. 



Of the thousands of people that see this Gull as a winter bird, compara- 

 tivelv few know of its home life during the season when it has left us and the 

 first breath of warm weather drives the Gulls northward. 



As a Gull's chief food is gleaned from the sea, it must nest as close as pos- 

 sible to its source of supply. You can easily see that so large a bird could never 

 be free from annoyance on our bathing beaches or off-shore islands that are 

 used as summer resorts; so, as people flocked to the shore, more 

 The Gull ^^^ more, the places where Gulls might nest in comfort grew 



fewer and fewer, and they w^ere driven to the remote islands like 

 those off the Maine coast, Great Duck Island, No-Man's-Land, and others, 

 and it is at Great Duck Island that is to be found the largest colony of Gulls 

 within the United States. 



But even here and on many lesser islands, with only lighthouses and their 

 keepers for company, where there were no summer cottages or pleasure-seekers, 

 until a few years ago, the Gulls were not safe, for they, like the White Herons 

 of the South, were bonnet-martyrs. These beautiful white breast-feathers were 

 made into feather turbans. Perhaps, on one side of these, a smaller cousin of 

 the Gull, the Tern, or Sea Swallow, with its coral-red beak, would be perched 

 by way of finish. Or else, soft bands made of the breast, and some of the hand- 

 somest wing-quills were used for trimming. 



Not only were these feathers sold wholesale to the plume merchants and 

 milliners, but people who went to the coast resorts would buy them of the sail- 

 ors simply because they were pretty, without giving a thought to the lives they 

 cost, or of how desolate and lonely the shores would be when there were no more 

 Gulls. 



They are very sociable birds at all times of the year, keeping in colonies 

 even in the breeding season, a time when song- and other land-birds pair, 

 and prefer to be alone. Trees are sometimes used for nesting but the ground 

 is the usual place. The nests, when on the ground or upon flat rocks, are built 



