r 



The Western 



if their own homes are threatened, 'Rob the Murres,' 

 they shout, and off they go to try for weak places. It 

 has its historical analogies only in the persecution of the 

 Christians at Rome or in the 'Jew baiting' of the 

 Middle Ages. An idle mob finding itself assembled for 

 any cause and cheated of its first object, proceeds to do mis- 

 chief to the favorite weaklings. Today I may have been 

 partly responsible for the assemblage of unoccupied gulls — 

 I was making a discriminating study of egg colonies in the 

 west nesting — but I was in no way responsible for any dis- 

 quiet among the murres. The gulls started that, and 

 my attention was called to it by the outcries on and 

 beyond the crest of the west arch. A crowd of thirty 

 or forty gulls were hovering over a murre ledge and 

 members of the party were continually dipping down to 

 harry the Rumpfoots. The tactics succeeded, for the murres 

 crowded forward and exposed a few eggs, which were promptly 

 seized. At this point I intervened and forestalled the marauders 

 in the name of Science. On other occasions since, I have seen 

 alarms raised among the gulls for which no human 

 presence was responsible, and invariably there is a 

 movement of apprehension along the ledges, a 

 shifting of position and a little desertion on the 

 part of the more timid. And invariably, also, a 



few gulls detach themselves from the quarreling crowd of their own kind 

 and make a hurried reconnaissance of the loomeries." 



We soon found that if we wanted to do photographic stunts we re- 

 quired no better bait than a few murres' eggs temptingly exposed. The 

 first comer might be wary, but he soon lost his scruples; while each 

 successful seizure thereafter would be chorused by a shout of envious 

 approval from other gulls less bold. 



By way of experiment, and to utilize certain murres' eggs which the 

 gulls would have got otherwise anyhow, we arranged a little series of 

 substitutions. Our victims were the gulls nesting on the "shell beach" 

 nearest the north spur of the central ridge. We substituted a murre's 

 egg for a gull's; and bestowed the surplus eggs so gathered upon another 

 member of the gull family. Altogether we "doctored" ten nests, making 

 a careful record of each change for future reference — then retired to note 

 results. In every instance but one the birds returned promptly to their 

 nests. The exception hesitated, apparently through fear of us, and not 

 at all through suspicion of her nest. Even the one who had received a 

 double portion of proper gull eggs did not hesitate to undertake her full 



1387 



Taken at Coronado 



Photo by Donald R. Dickey 



BANKING 



NOTICE USE OF ALULA. OR ' 



