At the Water's Edge 



Gulls are well called in the books "long- 

 winged swimmers;" at times floating or 

 gracefully paddling upon the water, but much 

 oftener seen in the air, slowly coursing upon their 

 very long and pliant wings. Most of the spe- 

 cies are quite large, and they are chiefly coast 

 birds, although a very few of them extend also 

 far into the interior of the continent. There 

 are in all, in North America, twenty species, a 

 dozen of them found on the Atlantic coast, 

 and the remainder on the Pacific. They are 

 for the most part arctic birds ; that is to say, 

 they commonly breed very far to the north ; 

 so far, indeed, that several of them are called 

 circumpolar. At the approach of cold weather 

 most of the species wander southward along the 

 coast ; some not even, so far south as to the 

 United States; others to New England and 

 the Middle Atlantic States, and a very few to 

 Florida. Possibly their coming south in winter 

 is not so much due to their being "frozen out " 

 from arctic regions, as to the fact that food is 

 more abundant in warmer waters. Our herring 

 gull breeds between New England and Lab- 

 rador, while another and much smaller species, 

 commonly found along our coast, even in sum- 

 mer, and called the "laughing gull," from 



IS7 



