270 THe Birps Azout Us. 
excited crows, the screaming of the gulls,—these make 
a morning worth seeing; it is a day that thrills, and 
we go back, as it were, to a time when the river and 
the valley were fresh and new. These are the sights 
and sounds that we are occasionally treated to now; 
but now they are the exception, the time was when they 
were the rule. Weare reduced now to two species 
of gulls and not many of them; but when the old 
travellers of two centuries ago were exploring this 
river (how strangely that sounds to us!) they saw 
sights that have now forever passed away. When 
Dankers and Sluyter went from Trenton (Falls of 
Delaware) to Chester, Pennsylvania, and had to row 
their boat sometimes against tide, the gulls followed 
them, I think, as they will now keep astern of a tug- 
boat, watching for scraps. 
Perhaps they saw a peli- 
can on the shore, ora crane; 
they did not fail to start 
from their fishing-grounds 
whole troops of herons, blue 
and white, large and small, 
and all noisy as a modern 
convention. 
It is seldom that the up- 
river gulls ever go far in- 
land, and when they do, it 
is only to sail high up in 
Gull. the air, and so within sight 
of the open water. I refer 
now to the Herring Gull. Occasionally the Black- 
headed Gull will throng the flood-meadows when 
