ii8 BIRD WATCHING 



they were honestly entitled, for they seem to leave 

 the rest, mostly, for the chicks, of which there are, 

 commonly, two. At any rate, a number of the 

 herrings will have only a small portion eaten off 

 them. There is a great profusion, amounting to 

 waste, and there does not seem any reason why the 

 skuas should vary their diet during the breeding 

 season, as they are asserted to do, since they have 

 the sea always at hand, and the gulls, that are to 

 them as their milch cows, breed in their close 

 proximity. 



In the skuas we see the habit of obtaining food by 

 forcing another bird to disgorge what it has swallowed, 

 perfected and become permanent, so that the birds 

 practising it have risen — shall we say ? — into rapacious 

 parasites ; but amongst the gulls themselves, who suffer 

 by the practice, we may see, if I am not mistaken, the 

 habit in its incipiency, and may get a hint as to how it 

 might have arisen. When fishing-smacks are in harbour 

 they are thronged round, sometimes, by hundreds of 

 gulls, all the more common kinds — viz. the lesser and 

 greater black-backed, herring-gulls, and kittiwakes — 

 being mixed and crowded together. When some offal 

 is thrown out, the birds that secure any are at once 

 mobbed, and often it is torn away from them almost 

 before they have swallowed a mouthful. To avoid 

 this, they often rise with it in the beak and get it down 

 as fast as they can on the wing, dodging and jerking 

 their head from side to side amongst the pursuing 

 crowd. But I have observed that the pursuit does not 

 always cease after the morsel has been swallowed, and 

 sometimes — whether rarely or frequently I am unable 

 to say — the oppressed gull disgorges it again, in order 



