AMONG THE WATER FowL 
and Ring-billed Gulls are ordinarily shy enough, 
except by wharves, where they seem to know that 
there is no shooting allowed. But the sable-backed 
fellow “never relents,” have, in years past, ge 
hausted all my ingenuity in vain efforts to get 
near one. 
A good glass, however, makes even these va- 
rious large shy Gulls seem mear, andl lovemto 
watch and study them upon our coasts in winter 
under the various conditions: on restless wing and 
with keen vision scouring the ocean for food, tack- 
ing in the teeth of the winter’s gales; settling in 
flocks upon the wind-swept sea, out beyond the 
breakers; gathering on the beaches and flats when 
the tide goes down, where they walk about with 
sedate bearing, and stoop to conquer the juicy 
bivalves or the luckless crustacean; sitting on the 
edge of some field or drifting cake of ice, the very 
incarnation of Boreas. ‘These are all typical sights. 
To study the Gulls further, let us make a jour- 
ney in thought, westward to North Dakota, that 
paradise of water-fowl. There I will introduce the 
reader to some islands in a®large Take? ‘Wheyeace 
nothing but small, low, rocky shoals, of very little 
beauty in themselves. But I call them “The En- 
chanted Isles,’’ for there are more kinds of water- 
birds breeding on them than on any other small 
area that I have ever seen. It was only accidently 
that I learned of their whereabouts three years ago, 
through one who, not a bird-student, tarried awhile 
in this, the lake region of North Dakota. In all 
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