THE GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL. 719 
One marvels at the boldness these harbor gulls at times display, especially 
when a touch of winter has made us all akin. The man who minds his own 
business may sometimes pass within six feet of sitting birds,—pass, not pause. 
For let him stop but that fraction of an instant necessary to adjust a focus, and 
the wary birds are off, their minds poisoned by dark suspicion. When the 
great hunger is on, it is possible to bait the gulls to the camera in many ways; 
but when that aching void is filled, all direct efforts at acquaintance are futile. 
Thinking to effect an ensemble piece, | once dumped a keg of choice “seconds” 
from the rails of a packing house. The sun was bright, the camera set, and the 
focus chosen. ‘The gulls burdened every pile and timber in the vicinity; and 
yet as that wanton meat floated off on the tide, the pampered birds only leered 
foolishly at it, and resumed their meditations. 
But it is not alone as pensioners of the city’s untidy soup kitchen that we 
may know the gulls. Altho undoubted children of the sea, the gulls have cer- 
tain Limicoline affinities, which lead them to seek the vicinage of ponds and 
fresh water shallows. ‘That is to say, the ur-ancient ancestor of the gulls was 
a swamp-loving bird, and the gull is but answering the primeval call when it 
forsakes the sea to idle about in flooded meadows or to haunt some alluvial bar. 
On a lush day in early spring I have seen hundreds of these adventurers patter- 
ing about the dank gardens at Malmo’s, now stopping to gaze at their images in 
the shallow mirrors of a recent rain, now wading into the ooze and treading 
it in an apparent ecstacy of delight over its squashiness. 
At another time the whim of the aeronaut may seize whole companies of 
gulls, and they will sail about over the city, gyrating by the hour in utter aim- 
lessness save such as actuates park strollers on a summer afternoon. 
We may not follow now as our Gull hovers over or trails after any one of 
the scores of boats which ply the waters of Puget Sound, but must hasten with 
him in May to the nesting islands, the San Juans and the Olympiades. Many 
birds lay aside their natural reserve and invite confidence, where they do not 
actually throw themselves upon human protection, at nesting time. Not so 
with our gulls. Whether upon Waldron Head, Skipjack, Gull Island, or upon 
the precipitous rocks of the western coast, the gulls are suspicious, wary, and 
irreconcilable. Einter one of their colonies, and behave you never so amiably, 
even to the point of accepting unoffered hospitality for a week, it is all one. 
You are an enemy and the gull is unforgiving. Generations of abuse have 
ingrained this conviction into the gull’s breast, and the just must suffer with 
the unjust until the average of humanity rises. 
Of course the aborigine has been at fault here; but the little finger of the 
white man is as the loins of the Indian, when once his cupidity is aroused. 
Williamson Rock and the Bird Rocks, lying in Rosario Straits, have been so 
often robbed that their inhabitants flee at a shadow; and it is a bold bird that 
nests on Viti, within reach of the motor-boaters of Bellingham. Fortunately, a 
