ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.] 
IRature IRotes : 
Zbc Selbome Society’s flftaga5ine. 
No. 204. DECEMBER, 1906. Vol XVII. 
A STORY OF SEAGULLS. 
By C. E. Meade Waldo. 
OME thirteen or fourteen years ago a young herring- 
gull, still in the down, was caught on a group of rocks 
called the Kedges, off the S.W. coast of County Cork. 
The gull grew and flourished and became quite tame, 
living at liberty about the house and garden of its captors. It 
remained with them till the following spring, when it flew away 
and joined the wild gulls, and its human friends thought that 
they would see it no more. 
When the weather began to be cold and stormy, in October, 
the gull returned as tame as ever, coming to the dining-room 
window and beating on the glass with its beak to ask for its 
breakfast and dinner of bread soaked in milk or water. This it 
has done every year since. Four years ago the gull was 
accompanied by a young one, which came again. Last winter 
it returned and stayed on very late into the spring, when three 
wild ones joined it, evidently trying to entice it away. It paired 
with one of them, and they tried to build a nest on the rough 
ground near the house, but cattle and dogs disturbed them so 
often that they went off at last to the seclusion of the rocks. 
The writer expects to hear any day now (October) that 
the gulls nave all returned to their winter quarters and their 
human friends. 
When the original gull was quite young it once got out of 
the garden into the road, and was caught by some boys who 
took it home. When they found it was a tame one they brought 
it back again. It had holes in the webs of its feet, burnt by 
walking on the hot ashes on the cabin floor, and these holes 
have never closed up. 
