THE STRUGGLE WITH COLD 329 



and the feast is begun before the bird is dead. Round the 

 harbours every variety of gull is busy picking up any refuse ; 

 and perhaps after all the proper work of the gull in the 

 economy of things is to scavenge, to eat up scraps, even to 

 play the vulture. For this task they are made omnivorous. 

 They swallow the bread we give them on London embank- 

 ments as eagerly as they pick garbage on the river. 



But the gulls, a various crowd of great multitude, are best 

 seen at their work of scavenging along the coast. It is the 

 great feeding-ground of winter, and its importance may best 

 be realised when the great shoals of fish begin to approach 

 the land, especially when, late in autumn, there come into east 

 coast waters huge shoals of silvery herrings, and sea-going 

 fishermen begin the harvest of the sea. It is a pleasant 

 sight when the day is bright to see the long processions of 

 sturdy steam luggers passing in and out the harbour. 

 Those with catches push their way vigorously towards the 

 port. Others just away from the wharves and quaysides, 

 slushed down and freshly cleared of fish scales and the 

 bloody drip of yesterday's catch, race each other to the 

 herring grounds, with nets ready to be shot for the night's 

 fishing. 



On just such days as these the waves fling upon the strand 

 queer things which have dropped from the nets, besides 

 strange creatures churned up from the depths. Above the 

 waters flocks of gulls scan with keen yellow eye the flotsam 

 flung from wave to wave. These welcome morsels may be 

 broken fishes, or sea anemones ripped from weed-grown 

 wreckage sunk in the shallows hard by some treacherous 

 sandbank. Often the larger gulls snatch up from the sea 

 the bedraggled carcase of some small drowned migrant bird 

 a skylark or a chaffinch, overcome by an adverse wind, 

 or starling, maimed by striking a lightship's lantern. The 



