WATCHING GULLS AND SKUAS 107 



lookers. I have seen a very desperate combat which 

 I at first thought was a general scrimmage. It was 

 not so, however. Two alone were engaged, but a cloud 

 of gulls swept over and hovered about them, often 

 hiding them from view. All were interested, and inter- 

 ested, it seemed to me, against one of the two birds 

 who stood all the time on the defensive, beating or 

 trying to beat off with wings and beak the continual 

 eager rushes of his assailant. Many times they closed 

 and went struggling and flapping over the ground, 

 attended all the time by gulls in the air and gulls 

 walking about and near them. When they disengaged, 

 the same bird — as I inferred from the dramatic unity 

 of its conduct — attacked again in the same eager way, 

 as though the greater vivacity of its feelings or disposi- 

 tion made it always more quick than the other, though 

 this one was equally brave and determined. One 

 might almost fancy that the attacking gull had had 

 some great wrong done it by the one it attacked. 

 This latter, however, a powerful and steady fighter, 

 finally beat off its assailant, who now took to the air. 

 Sweeping backwards and forwards above the hated one, 

 it made each time that it passed a little drop down 

 upon it with dangling legs and delivered, or tried 

 to deliver, a blow with the feet, a strategy which the 

 other met by springing up and striking with the beak. 

 Such a conflict as this makes quite a commotion 

 in the gull world, all those birds that have been 

 standing anywhere in the neighbourhood flying and 

 circling excitedly about above the combatants, or 

 settling and walking up to them. I did not see the 

 casus belli, so merely assume it to have been jealousy 

 between two rival males. Quite possibly the birds 



