216 American Birds 



of twenty gulls were fluttering around to pounce upon 

 every pelican that dove. The instant one disappeared and 

 came up with fish he was surrounded by a bunch of gulls, 

 each screaming to get a nose in the pelican's big fish bag. 



We were interested one winter in studying the great 

 flocks of gulls that live about San Francisco Bay. Every 

 morning at eight o'clock the garbage is emptied at the 

 long dock of the navy training station. The gulls about 

 the neighborhood know this as an ordinary laborer knows 

 the lunch hour. They flock around by the thousands. It 

 looks as if some one had poked a stick into a hive of big 

 feathered bees as the birds flutter about and fight for par- 

 ticles of food. 



Protection has made these birds very tame. " Old 

 Whitey " used to be known to every sailor on the Pensa- 

 cola training-ship, and he showed up for meals as regularly 

 as the bugle blew. He had his own perch on the bowsprit, 

 and took bread or meat from the hand like any pet. There 

 were always several others riding the anchor chain, wait- 

 ing for scraps from the table. Many of the birds were 

 very expert at catching morsels in the air, as they were 

 often fed by the sailors. I have often seen them take a 

 crust of bread in mid-air, rarely missing a catch. 



The minute a new food supply is found anywhere 

 about the bay, the news spreads in the gull world by wire- 

 less telegraph. A flock of half a dozen gulls will increase 

 to as many hundred in an hour or so. You can't see just 

 where they come from, but they come. When the steam- 

 dredger started to open the channel of the Oakland es- 

 tuary a whole flock of gulls sailed in and settled at the 

 mouth of the long pipe, which was belching forth a mix- 



