38 WATER BIRDS 
Catalina. It is the species best known East and West, 
following the coastwise vessels as well as those of the 
Great Lakes, and feeding on the refuse thrown out. 
Its name of Herring Gull is probably derived from its 
habit of following a school of herring, and gorging itself 
upon them as it flies. To see the countless numbers 
of gulls and shearwaters hovering over a school of her- 
rings in Monterey Bay is an experience worth a trip 
across the continent. No words can describe their 
multitude or their clamor. A compact cloud of them 
two miles long and half a mile wide, seeming almost 
like a solid mass of wings, is a common sight in that 
harbor. 
By a curious adaptation of its natural nesting-habits 
to necessity for self-protection, in localities where its 
nests have been continually robbed, it has learned to 
build in trees sixty and seventy feet from the ground. 
In these cases the nest is a compact structure some- 
what resembling a crow’s nest, but more often plastered 
with a small amount of mud and lined with grasses and 
moss. In fact, it adapts itself to local conditions in 
placing and constructing its home: guided by some 
instinctive law, it lays its eggs on the bare ground in 
one region; it elaborately lines and carefully conceals 
its nest in another; and, wherever necessary for self- 
preservation, it chooses a tall tree. 
The young gulls are fascinatingly fat babies covered 
with fluffy down, and even prettier than ducklings. When 
hatched in ground nests, they soon learn to run about, 
and they are taken to the water when a few weeks 
