The Glaucous-winged Gull 



muster on the made lands or open tide flats. Here their white battalions 

 of rest afford a pleasing contrast to the squalor of commerce behind 

 them. 



One marvels at the boldness these harbor gulls at times display, 

 especially when a touch of winter has made us all akin. The man who 

 minds his own business may sometimes pass within six feet of sitting 

 birds — pass, not pause. For let him stop but that fraction of an instant 

 necessary to adjust a focus, and the wary birds are off, their minds 

 poisoned by dark suspicion. When the great hunger is on, it is possible 

 to bait the gulls to the camera in many ways; but when that aching void 

 is filled, all direct efforts at acquaintance are futile. Thinking to effect an 

 ensemble piece, I once dumped a keg of choice "seconds" from the rails 

 of a packing house. The sun was bright, the camera set, and the focus 

 chosen. The gulls burdened every pile and timber in the vicinity; and 

 yet as that wanton meat floated on the tide, the pampered birds only 

 leered foolishly at it, and resumed their meditations. 



But it is not alone as pensioners of the city's untidy soup kitchen 

 that we may know the gulls. Although undoubted children of the sea, 

 the gulls have certain Limicoline affinities, which lead them to seek the 

 vicinage of ponds and fresh-water shallows. That is to say, the ur-ancient 

 ancestor of the gulls was a swamp-loving bird, and the gull is but answer- 

 ing the primeval call when it forsakes the sea to idle about in flooded 

 meadows or to haunt some alluvial bar. On a lush day in early spring I 

 have seen hundreds of these adventurers pattering about the dank truck 

 farms of the upper bay, now stopping to gaze at their images in the shallow 

 mirrors of a recent rain, now wading into the ooze and treading it in an 

 apparent ecstasy of delight over its squashiness. 



Taken in Seoul 



