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 



