2O 



THE SOUTHERN CLIFFS 



with powerful beats of the wing, half-hidden by 

 smoking mist, where the gale cut the crests of the 

 waves and drove them on in clouds of greyish spray. 

 Their course was at right-angles to the direction of 

 the gale, and when its steady impulse drifted them 

 shorewards, the big birds set their faces to the blast, 

 and worked their way out to sea by sheer force of 

 wing and muscle. The herring-gulls had abandoned 

 the effort to keep the sea, but had not yet been driven 

 from the shore. Unlike the black-headed gulls, whose 

 habit is to nest inland, and who readily leave the 

 coast for the fields whenever the supply of food is 

 likely to be more abundant on the ploughlands than 

 on the coast, the herring-gulls are true sea-fowl, 

 nesting on the cliffs, and getting their living by fishing 

 or picking up the sea-refuse on the beach ; if driven 

 inland, they are more often than not lost and bewil- 

 dered, and being well aware of the danger they run 

 if once they lose sight of the sea, their fight against 

 the gale is strengthened by something more than the 

 common reluctance of birds to leave their own familiar 

 haunt. Unable to cruise over the water like the great 

 black-backed gulls, and unwilling to drift inland, they 

 held their place and maintained it throughout the 

 day by the use of the power of soaring, or floating 

 like kites against the wind. With wings extended and 

 motionless, they floated edgeways to the gale, which 

 gradually lifted them higher, and drove them towards 

 the land. When carried backwards to a point above 

 the edge of the cliff, they allowed themselves to fall 



