270 



THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



excited crows, the screaming of the gulls, these make 

 a morning worth seeing ; it is a day that thrills, and 

 we go back, as it were, to a time when the river and 

 the valley were fresh and new. These are the sights 

 and sounds that we are occasionally treated to now ; 

 but now they are the exception, the time was when they 

 were the rule. We are reduced now to two species 

 of gulls and not many of them ; but when the old 

 travellers of two centuries ago were exploring this 

 river (how strangely that sounds to us !) they saw 

 sights that have now forever passed away. When 

 Bankers and Sluyter went from Trenton (Falls of 

 Delaware) to Chester, Pennsylvania, and had to row 

 their boat sometimes against tide, the gulls followed 

 them, I think, as they will now keep astern of a tug- 

 boat, watching for scraps. 

 Perhaps they saw a peli- 

 can oh the shore, or a crane ; 

 they did not fail to start 

 from their fishing-grounds 

 whole troops of herons, blue 

 and white, large and small, 

 and all noisy as a modern 

 convention. 



It is seldom that the up- 

 river gulls ever go far in- 

 land, and when they do, it 

 is only to sail high up in 

 the air, and so within sight 

 of the open water. I refer 



now to the Herring Gull. Occasionally the Black- 

 headed Gull will throng the flood-meadows when 



Gull. 



