126 WILD LII-I-; IN CHINA. 



must not be allowed to pass unnoticed. Some of the larger 

 gulls are rank robbers, chasing and depriving smaller birds 

 of the prey they have laboured to procure for themselves. 

 There is a good deal of human naturein birds! InScotlandand 

 other northern countries, where they are to be found when the 

 young of animals are abundant, it is well known that gulls are 

 not infrequently responsible for the destruction of a good 

 many of these. Lambs, for example, especially if at all weakh'. 

 they wiUcombineto overwhelm, the first onslaught being made 

 on the eyes. Sometimes other birds are attacked, killed, and 

 eaten, the voracious gull taking on himself the role of the 

 raptores proper. In all probability, however, these excursions 

 into uncommon larders are due to one of two causes — scarcit}- 

 of the more natural food, or inability on the part of the bird 

 to capture it. We may compare gulls with ordinary- beasts 

 of prey, which, as Kipling has so characteristically pourtrayed 

 in his Jungle Stories, turn aside from their ordinary- habits 

 under compuisiort of hunger. In times of scarcity, tigers 

 descend to very low hunting indeed. When toothless and 

 decrepit they are man-eaters. So with birds. They keep 

 their proper "form" as long as that is possible, but when 

 hunger comes, and bird hunger must be far more difficult to 

 bear than human, they stick at nothing. So there is some 

 excuse even for a lamb-killing gull. 



