Franklin’s Gull 125 
Now that these billowy western prairies are teeming with settlers, there are 
thousands of farmers who know well this beautiful bird. No wonder that it 
is popular. Its tameness and familiarity are delightful, especially to those who 
live remote from neighbors of their own kind. Its abundance, too, in some places, 
is picturesque and spectacular. In the cold days of a Dakota spring, I have 
seen the air alive with them, as they settled like a snowy blanket upon the dark 
plowing. 
Another fact which should mark it as one of our notably valuable species 
is that it is largely imsectivorous. When in flocks they follow the plow, they are 
eagerly eating the grubs and cutworms exposed to view. Or, alighting on the 
prairie sward, they are busy devouring grasshoppers, locusts, and whatever 
Insects come in their way. I have often watched them chasing and catching 
insects awing, darting about like swallows, either low over the marshes or well 
up aloft. In a nesting colony in Minnesota, Dr. T. S. Roberts found that the 
young were fed almost wholly on insects. The stomach of one specimen examined 
contained remains of fifteen kinds of insects, several of which were notably 
injurious to man. Most of their food, at this time, consisted of the nymphs of 
dragon-flies, of which one stomach examined contained 327. Like all other 
Gulls, they will, when opportunity offers, eat the eggs of other birds, as I once 
saw one do in a Grebe colony. This, however, was partly my fault, as I had 
frightened the Grebes from their nests before they had time to cover their eggs 
as usual, and thus put extra temptation in the Gulls’ way. Yet there can be 
no question but that the western farmer’s ‘Prairie Doves’ are among his most 
useful, as well as beautiful, allies. 
Another attractive element in this bird is its restlessness and mysteriousness. 
It is nearly always on the move. Faintly come the cries as of a distant flock of 
Wild Geese or a pack of hounds. Louder and louder grow the voices, and pres- 
ently the undulating line appears. Leisurely, yet steadily, it sweeps by, and soon 
vanishes in the distance, whither bound who can tell? Often have I longed to 
follow and learn their secret. But wherever I might drive with the bronchos and 
buckboard, I would see their lines still on the move. Where there is a marshy 
lake, they may often be seen, at times in large numbers, hovering over the rushes 
or canes, throwing up their wings to settle down, presently to come fluttering 
up again, parties frequently departing to straggle over the prairie, and other 
parties arriving, probably passing to and from their distant breeding-ground. 
Each spring, in May, all the Franklin’s Gulls of a wide region somehow 
agree to resort to a particular one of the various marshy lakes for the purpose 
of rearing their young. Just how they decide the important question is not for 
us to know. At any rate, what they do select is a great area of grass, reeds, or 
rushes, growing out of the water, and there, out of the abundance of dry stems, 
each pair builds a partly floating nest, side by side with others, thousands of 
them. These great cities of the Franklin’s Gull present one of the most spectac- 
ular sights of bird-life on our continent, comparable, in a way, to the former 
