STEERING 61 
and get into the right attitude for settling. It is 
a clumsy performance. 
The movement of the head to one side or the 
other has, no doubt, some slight influence on the 
balance. But the skull is very light, a great part 
of it as thin as paper, and one may occasionally 
see a Gull look to the left while he steers to the right 
(Pl. 1x), just as a skater, who is quite at home 
on his skates, can make such minor movements 
without in any way upsetting his balance. This 
subject naturally brings to mind the wonderful 
way in which Mr. Cody showed the lateral stability 
of his biplane. He carried a passenger who stood 
at a distance of ten and a half feet from the centre 
where he himself was piloting. When a bird 
turns his head, it is far more probable that he is 
directing his eyes, to right or left, towards some 
object that has attracted his attention, than that 
he is regulating his balance. Mr. Bentley Beetham 
has a capital photograph* in which he has caught 
five Gulls in the act of turning their heads to the 
right. This may possibly be due, as he suggests, 
to a local current of air with which they all equally 
have to cope. But it seems far more likely that 
they have all suddenly caught sight of some object 
of interest, a fish or shoal of fish, at no great 
distance. What would one not give for a photograph 
of a large flock of birds scudding through the air 
high aloft—for a photograph taken at the moment 
when by some common impulse, as if following some 
leader, they each and all change their course ? Might 
we not see, if we could obtain such a photograph, 
* British Birds, Dec., 1910. 
