I02 jyvTCHKK, Protection of Gulls and Teyns. LJan 



pearance it had died only a short time before. Some other dead 

 birds were found on the island but they were always very small 

 ones. After passing the downy stage the mortality seems to be 

 very slight. The writer wishing to get some photographs of the 

 old birds concealed himself among the spruces and almost imme- 

 diately the adult birds commenced to settle on the trees or on the 

 ground among the nestlings, and the cries ceased to a large de- 

 gree. The slightest movement or the appearance of the hider was 

 sufficient to alarm the gulls and at once clouds of them were in 

 the air again. Invariably on alighting, either on the ground or in a 

 tree top, the gulls would elevate both wings preparatory to folding 

 them. It was certainly a most beautiful and impressive sight to 

 see these superb white birds perched singly or in groups on the 

 spruce tops, and it forcibly impressed itself upon the mind of the 

 writer that if every feather-wearing woman could only see them 

 there she would never again ask to see them perched upon a 

 bonnet. The birds are too grand to be used for any other pur 

 pose than that intended by nature. 



The Island of No-mans-land is so admirably situated for a 

 breeding place for Herring Gulls that it would be a wise move on 

 the part of the Commonwealth of Maine to purchase it and set it 

 aside in perpetuity as a reservation and home for the gulls. How- 

 ever, this would be useless unless at the same time a law was 

 passed giving them absolute protection at all times and making it 

 a misdemeanor to kill one. 



One of the principal industries of the male population of Matin- 

 icus Island is the catching and curing of codfish. While on the 

 fish wharf one day, the writer took a bucket of cod livers and, 

 although not a gull or tern was in sight, commenced to throw 

 them one by one into the water. It was only a moment or so 

 when a tern appeared, and with light, graceful darts to the sur- 

 face would daintly pick up pieces of liver. Soon others appeared, 

 and with them gulls, until in a very short time a mixed flock of 

 terns and gulls were gathered numbering nearly a hundred. A 

 cod liver is about two inches wide and six inches long, but a 

 gull will take a whole one down at a single gulp. The contrast 

 between the light, airy movements of the terns and the heavy 

 splash of the gulls, which made the spray fly, was very marked. 



