Catching Gulls 
birds I wanted to take back with me. I had no 
difficulty in catching the ivory gulls; there 
were plenty of these pretty little birds around 
Danes Ghat, but I only wanted two or three at 
most. I used the padded traps I had obtained 
in Trondhjem with seal’s fat as bait, and this 
they seemed unable to resist. When caught I 
tethered them by the leg until I had a box made 
in which I could transport them home. I also 
caught a specimen of Richardson’s and Buffon’s 
skuas, all of which fed freely in captivity. The 
glaucous gulls defeated me completely, not that 
I had any difficulty in catching them, but they 
absolutely refused to touch food of any descrip- 
tion when caught, until they became living 
skeletons, and out of sheer compassion I had to 
give them their liberty. One in particular was 
very obdurate. I had put a big lump of seal’s 
fat on a hummock of ice sixty yards away in 
order to get the various birds to feed freely on it. 
This particular bird, though starving, would not 
touch the daintiest morsels I provided him with 
So long as he was tied by the leg, but as soon 
as I liberated him he at once discovered and 
demolished the greater part of the fat I had put 
down at a distance. I somehow respected that 
bird. His cussedness was manifest in that he 
preferred to starve to death rather than feed in 
captivity. 
On my return to England I presented the 
169 
