238 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
they are very weak in the neck and helpless; but in the 
course of a few hours the little Gulls are strong enough to 
walk, and the instinct to hide at the approach of anything 
strange comes to them very suddenly, so that a Gull 
only three or four hours old will slip out of the nest and 
either hide beneath a few grass blades or flatten itself in 
the sand, where, owing to its spotted, colour-protective 
down, it is almost invisible, so well does Nature care for 
her children — provided that man does not interfere. 
When a Gull nests in a tree, however, the little birds, not 
feeling the same necessity for hiding, do not try to leave 
the nest until the growth of their wings will let them fly. 
“On the sea beaches squids and marine refuse are fed 
to the young Gulls, but where they have nested near fresh, 
instead of salt, water many insects gleaned from the fields 
are eaten. 
“Tt was in the Gulls’ nesting season that the plunderers 
chose to go to their island haunts, steal the eggs, and kill 
the parent birds, whose devotion, like that of the White 
Heron, left the birds at the mercy of the plume hunters. 
“At the end of summer the young, wearing their 
speckled suits, are able to join the old in flocks, and it is 
then that they scatter along the coast, some going from 
the northern borders down to the Great Lakes. In and 
about New York City they are one of the features of the 
winter scenery; they fly to and fro under the arches of the 
great bridge, and follow the ships the entire length of the 
harbour and out to sea. At night they bed down so close 
together that in places they make a continuous coverlid of 
feathers on the waters of the reservoirs and in the sheltered 
coves of the Hudson. From the banks of Riverside Park, 
