Franklin’s Gull 127 
nests at our feet, rude platforms of dead reed-stems, built up from the water 
among the reeds, which now had a fresh growth as yet only waist high, and 
thus were not tall enough to impede the view. The eggs were in twos and 
threes, dark drab in hue, and heavily marked with black. It seemed as though 
the whole colony must be awing, yet at almost every step new multitudes were 
startled and rose with tragic screams. In every direction we were encompassed 
by thousands upon thousands of screaming, indignant, outraged birds. Those 
whose nests were at our feet darted at our heads with reckless abandon. Most 
of the eggs had evidently been laid by the last week of May, and a few had 
already hatched. The birds were quite tame, and when we remained still for 
a time they would settle upon their nests within a dozen or fifteen feet of us. 
They were too modest, though, to incubate in our presence, but stood up till 
we withdrew. 
The location chosen by this assemblage was amid a denser growth and in 
less water than is often the case. The North Dakota colony I found nesting in 
quite open water, of no less depth than up to one’s neck, requiring a boat to reach 
it. Instead of reeds, a rather sparse growth of meadow grass furnished the sup- 
port and anchorage for the nests. This was practically the condition of affairs. 
encountered by Dr. Roberts in his Minnesota colony, except that this one was. 
on the edge of a wide expanse of entirely open water, the level of the lake haying 
been raised by heavy rains, apparently after the nests were constructed. The 
young would swim out from the protecting reeds, when the wind would catch 
them and begin to blow them out into the rough open water, where they would 
doubtless perish. The old birds would try to compel them to swim back,which 
they were unable to do. Failing in this, they would lay hold of the youngsters 
with their bills and drag or hurl them back to their nests, sometimes wounded 
and bleeding. Dr. Roberts also confirms my experience, and that of Mr. Bent,— 
who found this Saskatchewan breeding-ground abandoned the following season,— 
that these Gulls change their site from year to year, consistently with their 
generally fickle, roving character. They are inclined to alternate between sev- 
etal attractive locations, and return to a former favorite location in course of 
time. 
With the waning of July the life of these “White Cities” also wanes. The 
nights grow sharp and chill, the frosts coat the sloughs with incipient ice, and 
the settler must bid adieu, for a time, to his companionable ‘Doves.’ Like sail- 
ing-craft running free before the onslaughts of Boreas, they carelessly wander 
onward, to spend their “winter” where winter is but a memory, with choice 
variety of insect life for daily fare. And when, at length, the northern prairie 
lakes and sloughs are unlocked from their icy bonds, and the ‘Prairie Pigeons” 
once more course the long deserted expanses, many a human heart is glad. 
Never may heartless fashion dare to wrong the western farmers and the mullti- 
tudes who look to him for bread by seeking to appropriate the lone settler’s pet— 
a species important among the feathered custodians of the nation’s granaries- 
