62G The Zoologist— March, 1867. 



frigate as well as the oldest tar, and at times when not a bird is seen 

 some twenty or thirty will make their appearance round the vessel at 

 the dinner-hour to feed on the pieces thrown overboard. Its straugest 

 food is floating oil and grease, in taking which from the surface it and 

 the brownheaded gull show the greatest perseverance and ingenuity. 

 They will fly a foot above the surface, slowly beating the wings, and 

 when a piece of grease or a globule of oil drifts beneath them, the feet 

 dangle in the water, and thus balance the body so that the bill may 

 be dipped to catch the morsel : when the piece is taken the bird rises 

 with a slight jerk to the former elevation, and continues the steady 

 beating of the wings till another piece comes within reach ; occasionally 

 a sweep is made like a hawk's, that another position may be taken up. 

 The most minute scraps of food, such as disintegrated excrement, 

 &c, are thus fed upon, the gentle tide-runs of a harbour the situation 

 best adapted. Twenty or more thus engaged, incessantly crying 

 "Is-kla-he-ee," in the softest and most plaintive manner, with four or 

 five blackheadcd gulls in their pearly winter dress, dipping their coral 

 feet and bills in the short crisp waves ; some " gray " gulls, gorged and 

 floating bouyantly head to wind ; a northern diver lazily lying on the 

 water, occasionally giving his head a surly shake, or showing his huge 

 white breast as he stands to flap his wings; a slim shag on yonder 

 buoy burnishing his glossy back with his snake-like head and neck; 

 and a few independent sprightly little razorbills diving as if life was all 

 a play to them, make a striking picture. Many a cold winter's day, 

 when I could not venture to sea, have 1 sat hour by hour on a mooring 

 post watching such a charming scene. How delightful too it is to tread 

 on the bleak gray sands, miles from civilization, at twilight of a 

 winter's evening, hearing the night breeze sighing and moaning across 

 the dreary waste ; the east all dark and gray and hazy, the west still 

 tinted with the pale sunset, giving it a cold sickly yellow look, the air 

 pervaded by a frosty fog, the hard rippled sand beneath one's feet — to 

 be covered in a few short hours by the murmuring sea, whose harmony 

 together with the ^Eolean harp notes of the wind and the cry of the 

 wild gull are sweeter music far to me than the fairest voices and 

 richest instruments of man. Around on every side are little clusters 

 and Hocks of gulls, searching the lakes and pools in the sand for their 

 scanty fare, in company with oystercatchers, curlews, whimbrels, 

 dunlins, ringed and gray plovers, turnstones, sanderlings, knots, 

 redshanks, greenshanks, stints, godwits, and various clucks and geese, — 

 a nice orchestra for to-night, my box a barrel sunken in the sand to 



