Among the Water Fowl 



and Ring-billed Gulls are ordinarily shy enough, 

 except by wharves, where they seem to know that 

 there is no shooting allowed. But the sable-backed 

 fellow never relents. I have, in years past, ex- 

 hausted all my ingenuity in vain efforts to get 

 near one. 



A good glass, however, makes even these va- 

 rious large shy Gulls seem near, and I love to 

 watch and study them upon our coasts in winter 

 under the various conditions : on restless wing and 

 with keen vision scouring the ocean for food, tack- 

 ing in the teeth of the winter's gales; settling in 

 flocks upon the wind-swept sea, out beyond the 

 breakers ; gathering on the beaches and flats when 

 the tide goes down, where they walk about with 

 sedate bearing, and stoop to conquer the juicy 

 bivalves or the luckless crustacean ; sitting on the 

 edge of some field or drifting cake of ice, the very 

 incarnation of Boreas. These are all typical sights. 



To study the Gulls further, let us make a jour- 

 ney in thought, westward to North Dakota, that 

 paradise of water-fowl. There I will introduce the 

 reader to some islands in a large lake. They are 

 nothing but small, low, rocky shoals, of very little 

 beauty in themselves. But I call them "The En- 

 chanted Isles," for there are more kinds of water- 

 birds breeding on them than on any other small 

 area that I have ever seen. It was oiTiy accidently 

 that I learned of their whereabouts three years ago, 

 through one who, not a bird-student, tarried awhile 

 in this, the lake region of North Dakota. In all 



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