Voyage from Liverpool to Boston - Off South Coast of Ireland.
1911.
August 2
(No 11)
[August 2, 1911]

Remarkable flight of Herring Gulls.

appeared to join it. The neck, too, appeared to be exceptionally
elongated, giving one the impression that the bird[']s center of gravity
had been brought as far forward as possible. Its head was carried
normally with the bird pointing rather decidedly downward.
The plumage of head, neck and body looked unusually compressed
and these parts thereby narrowed much more than common.
In other and briefer words the birds seemed to have reduced as far
as might be the resistance to the air offered by their heads, necks &
bodies; to have advanced as far as they could their centers of gravity;
and to be employing the forces of the wind to drive them, literally
for miles, almost straight against it by merely letting it beat
against their long, stiffly-held but flexible and obviously downward
bent flight quills - especially secondaries, the longer primaries being held
more nearly level. Such flight through opposing air currents
constantly varying in forces and also at least slightly in direction,
would be quite impossible if the bird were unable to constantly