148 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



them. For the gull ashore is naturally out of his 

 element, and almost incapable of making a living 

 without assistance. The rooks which share with the 

 gulls the worms that the plough turns up can do well 

 enough, when the plough is idle at harvest-time, with 

 the scattered corn in the stubbles ; and they have a 

 certain skill, too, in discovering worms and grubs, 

 and catching daddy-long-legs in the pastures. But 

 the gull has no resources of this kind. His ancestors 

 have always been seafaring folk, and he has inherited 

 no landsman tricks. So, when he comes ashore to 

 stay for the winter months, he finds himself among a 

 land-bird population, all of whom have special talents, 

 which he has not, for extracting food from the hard 

 earth ; and he is badly off when, for reasons which 

 he cannot understand, man, instead of turning up 

 the brown earth full of worms for him, as usual in 

 September, seems to be playing the fool all over the 

 fields with heaps of scattered corn. 



CLEVER LAND BIRDS. 



The gull has one shift, indeed the traditional re- 

 source of seafaring folk who have become desperate. 

 He turns pirate and robs the peewits. That these 

 birds and the starlings whom the gull occasionally 

 plunders also in very hungry times are exceptionally 

 clever at finding food, is evident from their habit of 

 feeding in large companies all the winter, without 

 resorting, like the rooks and jackdaws, that sometimes 

 feed with them, to theft from corn-stacks and turnip- 

 fields. Their methods are different, however. The 

 starling goes probing about, wherever he can find 



