THE SEAGULL 
hood of Maryport, seeing an immense number 
of gulls turning up the soil in close proximity 
to several crows that, dangling from gibbets, 
effectually kept all black marauders away. 
Young gulls are, to the careless eye, apt 
to look larger than their parents, an illusion 
possibly due to the optical effect of their 
dappled plumage, and few people unfamiliar 
with these birds in their succeeding moults 
readily believe that the dark birds are younger 
than the white. Down in little Cornish har- 
bours I have sometimes watched these young 
birds turned to good account by their lazy 
elders, who call them to the feast whenever 
the ebbing tide uncovers a heap of dead 
pilchards lying in three or four feet of water, 
and then pounce on them the moment they 
come to the surface with their booty. The 
fact is that gulls are not expert divers. The 
cormorant and puffin and guillemot can 
vanish at the flash of a gun, reappearing far 
from where they were last seen, and can 
pursue and catch some of the swiftest fishes 
under water. Some gulls, however, are able 
to plunge farther below the surface than 
others, and the little kittiwake is perhaps the 
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