THREE BIRDS 31 



or Cley, or Hickling, or Blakeney, but not on a field 

 level and spacious and bare, on which a brave landowner 

 is practising the art and craft of mechanical farming. A 

 tractor less noisy than tractors used to be, for it is 

 furnished with rubber and air-stuffed wheels was pull 

 ing with delightful ease a three-furrowed plough 

 through the light sandy soil. Behind it flocked a host of 

 gulls, continually leap-frogging one another in the wake ; 

 and so hot was the competition for evicted worms and 

 less beneficial grubs that they were in danger of being 

 sprinkled by earth from the up-turned furrows as their 

 seaside cousins are sprayed by the &quot; white horses &quot; of 

 the unharvested sea. As the driver of the tractor, who 

 has the observant eye of the true countryman, turned at 

 the headland to repeat his journey he saw two white 

 triangles protruding from the outside of his latest three 

 furrows, and knew them to be the points of the wings 

 of a black-headed gull. The head was half in and half 

 out, in a ludicrous likeness to a chick coming put of an 

 egg or like Milton s ingenuous picture of lio^ns &quot; pawing 

 to be free &quot; at the Creation. He often gets down from 

 his tractor without stopping it. It seems dowered with 

 the power of automatic alignment ; and released the 

 gull from its burial. The bird just pinched his finger 

 mildly once with his opened beak, but otherwise showed 

 neither fear nor hostility. The ploughman tossed it up, 

 as a boy tosses up a toy balloon, and the gull flew easily, 

 and presently returned to the game. 



The incident, I am assured, has happened more than 

 once* The mould board throws the light soil over the 

 too eager camp-followers ; and though it usually does 

 no more than pelt them, will, on occasion, bury them 

 completely. The thing happens yet more often with the 

 eight-furrowed plough that you now see in East Anglia 



