1871] LETTER FROM MR. W. H. HUDSON. 5 



eggs are taken every year, the Gulls do not seem to diminish in 

 numbers. The abundance of their food in tbe settled districts favours 

 them greatly in their ■ struggle for existence.' 



" The young birds are of a pale grey colour mottled with dull brown, 

 and have a whining querulous note. The plumage becomes gradually 

 lighter through the autumn, winter, and spring ; but it must be a 

 year at least before they are perfectly like the adults in the fine ash- 

 blue of the wings, and in the white bosom with its lovely perceptible 

 blush. It is now ten months since the young were fledged, and yet, 

 in a flock, an observer at a hundred yards distance can easily dis- 

 tinguish them from the old birds. 



" So soon as the young birds are able to fly, the breeding-place is 

 forsaken, the whole concourse leaving in a body, or scattering in all 

 directions over the surrounding country ; and until the following 

 summer, the movements of the birds depend altogether on food and 

 water. As I mentioned in my last letter, in seasons of drought they 

 disappear totally, and when Grashoppers are very abundant appear 

 in countless multitudes. Drought and Grasshoppers unfortunately 

 often come together, so that the Gulls are not so useful as they 

 would otherwise be. In dry summers, when the insects are abun- 

 dant, it is common to hear people wish for rain, that the Gulls 

 might come and devour the Locusts. Apparently Gulls have been 

 useful to man in the same way on the western plains of North 

 America*. 



" The Gulls congregate in great numbers about ploughed grounds, 

 filling the new-made furrow till it appears like a white line, hovering 

 in a cloud over the ploughman's head, and following at his heels, 

 fighting, screaming, buffeting, in a compact crowd. When feeding 

 they invariably keep up a great noise and screaming. Wilson's ex- 

 pression in describing a northern species, that its cry ' is like the ex- 

 cessive laugh of a negro,' is also descriptive of the language of our 

 bird. Its peculiar cry is lengthened and inflected a thousand ways, 

 and interspersed with numerous short notes like excited exclamations. 

 When their hunger is satisfied they fly to the nearest water, where 

 they drink and bathe their feathers. Their ablutions over (in which 

 they appear to take great delight), they retire to some open spot in 

 the neighbourhood abounding in short green grass. Here they sit 

 close together with their bills to the wind ; in still weather they also 

 all look one way ; and the observer will watch the flock in vain to 

 find one individual out of this beautiful order. It is remarkable 

 that they do not stand up to take flight, but rise on the air directly 

 from a sitting posture. Usually they flap their wings twice or thrice 

 before the body is raised from the ground. 



" In some seasons in August and September, after a period of rainy 



* '-This I infer from a passage in Dixon's 'New America.' Speaking of the 

 hardships the Mormons endured when first settling on Salt Lake, he tells us 

 that the locusts eat down the grain as fast as it grew, but that this evil was 

 finally overcome by their devices to trap the insects, and ' with the help of Gulls 

 from the lake.'" 



