within the past year, have -written a paper (see The A t lan t ic Monthly) on this 

 selfsame subject. In my opinion and experience, gulls are "by no means "gull- 

 ible," Last summer we were staying for a short time at the Atlantic Hotel at 

 Newquay; and, \?hile at breakfast, we noticed a fullgrown Herring Gull fly from 

 the seashore, a few hundred yards away, and light on the terrace close by the 

 dining room. He was followed shortly by others and by still others until 

 there were, perhaps fifty waiting about. My wonder at this strange phenomenon 

 was soon satisfied; they, too, had come for breakfast. In a few minutes one 

 of the hotel people arrived with a can of "leftovers", and it certainly was 

 a sight to watch the array of heads, wings, feet and bodies that forthwith hid, 

 as by a dense cloud, the scattered piles of food. It was especially interest- 

 ing to watch the late arrivals, fearful of being excluded from the feast. They 

 literally threw themselves, screaming, into the struggling mass of white, grey 

 and black feathers. As the birds were perfectly tame and unafraid, there was 

 a fair field for all, and I was aire no gull flew away without some scrap to 

 satisfy appetite. I was informed that the "bird feeding was held every morning 

 at the same hour, and tl&t the hotel guests regarded the ceremony as one of 

 the attractions of the place. 



When, more recently, E. and I came to Coronado, I began a similar practice, 

 and soon had an expectant colony to feed on the sandy shore near our hotel. 

 Quite a respectable collection of Western and other gulls gathered about 9:30 

 each morning, and when I appeared with a bag of "seconds", some twenty or 

 thirty birds rose to meet me, and circled about my head until I arrived at the 

 feeding ground. Then we had a sort of athletic "meet." 



One of the first contesys was staged by throwing into their midst a large, 

 hard, breakfast roll. This edible was forthwith seized by a gull, who, unable 

 to swallow it, at once made off, followed by half a dozen others, in search of 

 a place of safety. The pursued and the pursuers fi>ew a fine aerial course, the 

 bird with his mouth full of bread often rising high in air, swooped, dodged and 

 doubled. Finally, he broke away in a much wider circle than usual, intent on 

 tiring out hi? pursuers. However, all these manoeuvers ended the same "way, in 

 the dropping of the roll, to be caught up by a second gull and the continuation 

 of the flight and pursuit. Eventually, some experienced bird would grasp the 

 breakfast dainty and fly down the coast for half a mile or so until his pursuers 

 abandoned the chase. .But I noticed on these occasions that the successful bird 

 did not return; his time for the subsequent half -hour v,as occupied in soaking 

 the hard bread preparatory to tearing it in pieces small enough for deglutition. 

 Occasionally we substituted for the roll a hard-boiled egg. This much-prized 

 article was immediately caught up and passed from one gull to another by 

 vigorous action until it was either smashed by falling on a rock or until some 

 bird with an abnormally wide gullet managed to swallow it. To accomplish this 

 latter feat while being chased at full speed seemed no easy task; it is possible 

 that it was sometimes accomplished only by crushing the egg between the mandibles 

 of a particularly powerful gull. 



Another game we dubbed "gull baseball". We threw .or bowled (as in nine- 

 pins) grapes along the hard, smooth sand into the expectant crowd of birds. 

 Some of them, impelled by wing and leg power, ran after the rolling grape and, 

 noxT a-nd then, caught it "on the fly", others swooped do\7n on it from above- 

 but the gull that evoked our applause faced us and rath outspread wings and 

 open mouth, "short- stopped" the grape in the most approved fashion. Some birds 

 became quite expert at this game and rarely failed to catch the small fruit 



