Birds by Land and Sea 



and its lifetime may well be a century. It will take 

 offence at your presence more readily than the other 

 gulls, and as it passes, utters a low " Ha-ha-ha-ha I " 

 and sails on solemnly, leaving you admonished. If 

 his displeasure is aroused, he will return again and 

 again to swoop at you with his menacing cry. " The 

 sea is his," he seems to say ; " and the wind and 

 the tides and the smitten rocks. Get back to your 

 brick-and-mortar cages with their glass peep-holes." 

 A century of the sea may well give a sense of pre- 

 scriptive right. The magisterial dignity of the great 

 black-back is the very antithesis of all that goes to 

 make up a kittiwake. The kittiwake never grows 

 old. It makes its little nest on its little ledge, as if 

 it were playing at housekeeping. It is just the 

 spoiled child of the sea. When they come out from 

 the cliff, circling before their nesting site a little 

 select company to themselves they are full of 

 plaintive protest. " Ef-a-ay ! " " Get away ! " they 

 seem to say in infantile English, and sail about on 

 their delicate pearl-grey wings with an air of superior 

 sobriety, as if they thought it was not proper for 

 birds in their sphere of life to be seen hurrying like 

 common herring-gulls. When they fall into a 

 temper, as they are apt enough to do, being of a 

 vehement disposition, they set to and scream in the 

 right nursery fashion, then go and sit sweetly on 

 their nests, pictures of the most angelic propriety. 



Our presence on the cliff united the whole 

 gullery in a chorus of common protest. The cry 



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