TOWN GULLS 75 



courtship, and marriage may be observed. Ardour 

 is not the word to describe a gull's courtship. A 

 mated pair will sit together by the hour, rarely 

 looking at each other ; but an intruding unmarried 

 bird is at once assaulted with vigour. If defeated, 

 he may take up his post on a point of rock where 

 he can watch the pair, and from which he seems 

 to throw sarcastic remarks which check any ten- 

 dency to public endearments. When nesting has 

 actually begun the blandishments are all on the 

 side of the female, and the male gull seems to 

 think the whole situation a trifle absurd. He 

 spends most of his time over the water hunting for 

 fish, occasionally remembering his mate, and bring- 

 ing her a trifle, which he disgorges before her in 

 an apologetic sort of way, as if to say, " Try 

 this little kickshaw. Young whiting is excellent 

 for incubating gulls." When, however, the young 1 

 are hatched, the male gull drops his half -ashamed 

 demeanour, and brings little kickshaws with 

 fatherly assiduity. And parents and young have 

 reason to bless the ancestors which selected a 

 nesting-place practically inaccessible to the 

 marauder, man. 



Gulls do not tarry long at the nesting-places 

 when their domestic duties are over, and we shall 

 have them back to the delights of estuary and 

 even town life before the autumn. The young 

 rapidly reach maturity, and their first lessons in 

 fishing are got in the water below the nesting cliffs. 

 What they feed upon in these positions is a matter 

 of some doubt, but it must consist in the main of 

 very small surf ace -swimming creatures, for, as no 



