SEA FOWL. 227 



then the jealous eyes of the keeper sees first-class misde- 

 meanants in them. One declares that a big nesting gull will 

 quarter the hill-side for young game like a hen-harrier on 

 the marsh lands. I must acknowledge in reply to this that 

 if I were a young grouse poult, with a wiry hank of knotgrass 

 by some mischance "clove hitched" round my leg my 

 comrades, too, over the brow of the hill then the wide 

 pinions and the keen brown eyes backed by the remorseless 

 bill of a big gull would not be the sight I should best 

 enjoy seeing to windward ! But these gulls hunt the moor 

 sides for mice, frogs, lizards, and so on ; they keep chiefly to 

 the parts of the heath which grouse and blackgame avoid, 

 and I do not think a colony of them would do any serious 

 mischief to a moor on which the game was healthy and not 

 overcrowded, the latter a condition of affairs which Nature 

 abhors and takes the first means at hand to mend. 



As for the rest of the list of sea fowl generally regarded 

 with hostility by some folk or other, there are amongst them 

 birds which undoubtedly sympathize with human fancies in 

 the way of a fish diet. There are the divers the "loons" 

 of the boatmen, extraordinarily voracious and expert fishers ; 

 but then there will not be more than a pair of them to many 

 miles of coast. The gannets, again, I fancy, appreciate 

 " caller herrin " as much as any Loch Fyne housewife. It is 

 truly a fine sight in free falconry to see that great white 

 body of feathers and strength, a hungry solan, sweep down 

 the rifts of the clouds, surveying as he goes the hollows of 

 the waves that toss by under him in long confused ranks 

 before a fresh off-shore breeze, and then mark him suddenly 

 check his easy sweep from point to point and fall like a white 

 satellite with a triumphant scream from just under the grey 

 sky into those green waters which close over him in a cascade 

 of white foam. If any one could take their eyes off the bay 

 before he is up again, mounting in easy spirals to his watch 

 towers in the rift or begrudge him that silvery fish (what- 

 ever it be) over which the wind brings us his wild exulting 



