2 THE BIRD WATCHER 
shunning even the out® margin of the crowd. How 
lonely is this island, and yet how populous! The 
terns—a “shrieking sisterhood ”—-make, as I say, 
a canopy above me, when I pace or skirt their terri- 
tories ; but what is that to the great perpetual canopy 
of gulls that accompanies and shrieks down at me, 
almost wherever I go? Were it beneath any roof but 
that of heaven, how deafening, how ear-splitting 
would be the noise, how utterly unendurable! But 
going forth into the immensity of sky and air it 
sounds almost softly, harsh as it is, and even its 
highest, most distressful notes, sink peacefully at last 
into the universal murmur of the sea, making the 
treble to the bass of its lullaby. 
Most of the cries seem to resolve themselves into 
the one note or syllable “ow,” out of which, through 
varied tone and inflection, a language has been evolved. 
“Ow-ow, ow-0w, ow-ow!” sadly prolonged and most 
disconsolately upturned upon the last, saddest syllable 
—a despair, a dirge in “ow.” Then a series of shriek- 
ing “ows,” disjoined, but each the echo of the last, so 
that when the last has sounded, the memory hears but 
one. Then again a wail, intoned a little differently, 
but as mournful as the other. And now a laugh— 
discordant, mirthless, but a laugh, and with even a 
chuckle in it—“‘ ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!”’ the syllables 
huddling one another like the “‘petit glou-glou” of 
water out of a bottle. All “ow” or variants of ‘‘ ow,” 
till the great black-backed (the bulk are herring-gulls) 
swooping upon you, almost like the great skua itself, 
