The Wit of the Wild 



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The sailors began to toss bits of food where 

 he could snatch them up before some rival could 

 get ahead of him, and Dick soon understood the 

 game and was ready to play his part. 



This went on for twenty years, but the crew 

 of the lightship, changing year by year, passed 

 along the tradition to the new hands, so that 

 although by this time not a man was left of 

 those who had first known the bird, yet all were 

 his friends, and looked for his arrival as 

 eagerly, perhaps, as he anticipated his return 

 to the place where he was fed. 



All our gulls are now winter visitors to the 

 southern New England coast. Originally her- 

 ring-gulls bred there on the outer islets, but one 

 of the bad effects of civilization has been to 

 exterminate the breeding colonies or drive them 

 to more thinly settled northern shores, to lay 

 their eggs and rear their young in security. 



Dick was never seen in the summer, therefore, 

 but with unfailing regularity on some fine morn- 

 ing in the first week of October he would reap- 

 pear always in the morning, for these birds per- 

 form their migratory journeys mainly at night. 

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