Puffin Island 



without remarking it, just as is the case with the 

 monotonous sound of the sea. But when the 

 eastern gullery had worked itself up to full chorus, 

 our senses were aroused from their indifference. 



To watch from above the flight of a great body 

 of gulls was a delight to the eye. There were the 

 herring-gulls, with their white bodies and grey wings 

 tipped with black, sailing backwards and forwards 

 before the cliffs forwards against the wind, with 

 that more than nautical skill by which, in con- 

 junction with the natural gravity of their bodies, 

 they cause a head wind to aid in propelling them 

 against itself; backwards when, with a sudden 

 wheel, they let go and swept down the wind in full 

 abandonment. The lesser black-backed gull seems 

 a bird of sombrer mood. Whilst the herring-gulls 

 fly below, the black-back will come up to a level 

 with you or fly above you, so that, with its con- 

 spicuously dark wings and nearer flight, it leaves 

 the impression of a larger bird, although black- 

 backed and herring-gull are all but equal in size. 

 A staider and still more deliberate flight marks the 

 movements of the great black-back, and as he 

 passes slowly before you, his eye on a level with 

 your own, the brow seems to beetle in a set frown, 

 and the glass catches the expression of the deeply 

 set eye. It seems an old eye, wise, authoritative. 

 And, in fact, the bird may have been old when you 

 were a child, for it requires four years for a great 

 black-back to acquire all the marks of maturity, 



253 



