284 THE COMMON GULL 



mon Gull is mottled with brown, whereas it is greyish-white in the 

 Black-Headed species. 



Gulls are, moreover, of material service, for they perform for the 

 surface of the sea the same office which crustaceous animals do 

 for its depths. Most of their time is spent in either flying or swim- 

 ming about (they are no divers) in quest of food, which is of that 

 nature that, if suffered to accumulate, more than one of our senses 

 would be offended. All animal matter which, when life is extinct, 

 rises to the surface, it is their especial province to clear away. To 

 perform this necessary work, they have need of a quick eye and a 

 voracious appetite. That they have the former in an eminent 

 degree, any one may convince himself who, when taking a sea 

 voyage, sees the vessel followed, as he often will, by a flock of Gulls. 

 Let him fling overboard, into the foaming track of the ship, where 

 his own eye can distinguish nothing, ever so small a portion of bread 

 or other kind of food. That some one individual at least among 

 the flock will have seen it fall and be able to descry it is certain ; 

 now, probably, a general scramble will ensue, and the prize wiU be 

 secured by the swiftest. Having tried this several times with 

 the same result, let him throw over, instead of meat or bread, a bit 

 of wood. Not a bird will come near even to examine it. I have 

 often tried this experiment, and have met with but one result. To 

 prove that the Gull is capable of consuming a large quantity of 

 food, as well as quick-sighted, a single anecdote will suffice : — "A 

 man who was shooting on the banks of the river Yare, seeing some- 

 thing, which had the appearance of an eel half-swallowed, hanging 

 from the mouth of a Gull which was flying overhead, fired at the 

 bird, and on taking it up, found, not an eel, but — five tallow can- 

 dles attached to a piece of thread, to the other end of which was 

 fastened a sixth, the latter having been almost entirely swallowed. 

 The candles were about twelve inches in length, with cotton wicks, 

 such as are used on board the fishing boats, from the deck of which 

 he had probably taken them ". The Gull, then, is not choice in its 

 diet ; it is, in fact, omnivorous. It skims the deep for dead animal 

 matter, follows the ship for oflal thrown overboard, paces the shore 

 in quest of molluscs and marine insects, flies inland in stormy 

 weather (a specimen was once brought me which had been shot in 

 Hertfordshire, twenty miles from the nearest navigable river) 

 in winter and spring, and follows the plough along with Rooks and 

 Jackdaws, alights on fields which have been manured with decom- 

 posed fish, resorts to marshes for frogs and worms, and after an 

 inundation repairs to the lately submersed ground, and picks up 

 the small quadrupeds which have been drowned. It usually flies 

 at no great elevation above the water, but when repairing inland 

 and returning it frequently rises to a very great height. 



