FRANKLIN’S GULL 
By HERBERT K. JOB 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 44 
In late April or early May, when the rich black soil has thawed at 
the surface, the settler of the northwestern prairies goes forth to plow. 
The warm season is short and the tillage vast, so he delays not for wind 
or storm. One day he is dark as a coal-heaver, for the strong winds 
that sweep almost ceaselessly over the prairie hurl upon him avalanches 
of black dust. Next day, perchance, in a driving storm of wet snow, he 
turns black furrows in the interminable white expanse, his shaggy fur 
coat buttoned close around him. Then comes a 
day of warm sunshine, when, as he plows, he is Prairie 
J 7 ’ r ’ . Doves M 
followed by a troup of handsome birds which 
some mistake for white Doves. Without sign of fear they alight in the 
furrow close behind him, and, with graceful carriage, hurry about to 
pick up the worms and grubs that the plow has just unearthed. Often 
have I watched the plowman and his snowy retinue, and it appeals to 
me as one of the prettiest sights that the wide prairies can afford. No 
wonder that the lonely settler likes the dainty, familiar bird, and in 
friendly spirit calls it his Prairie Pigeon, or Prairie: Dove. 
It is indeed a beauty, a little larger than a domestic Pigeon, with 
white plumage, save for the grayish “mantle,” the dark slaty “hood” over 
head and neck, and the black-tipped wings. It often passes so near that 
one can see that the white underparts have an exquisite rosy blush, like 
that of a peach-blossom. In reality it is not a Pigeon or Dove, but a 
Gull, one of the several rosy-breasted Gulls of northern regions — Frank- 
lin’s Gull, or, as the earlier ornithologists called it, Franklin’s Rosy Gull, 
named in honor of Sir John Franklin, the arctic explorer. 
In Audubon’s time few white men had penetrated the “Great Ameri- 
can Desert,” or seen this handsome Gull, which 
Dr. John Richardson had discovered in the “fur A Recent 
countries.” Audubon himself had never met 
Acquaintance 
with it alive and has no picture of it in his great work, in which he 
described it from the only two stuffed skins available, brought from the 
Saskatchewan country, probably by some explorer or fur-trader. Indeed, 
little has been known or written about it till within quite recent years. 
Accounts of its habits in the standard works have been very meager and 
unsatisfactory. It is distinctively a bird of the prairies, ranging over 
both dry land and marshy lakes throughout the region of the great 
northwestern plains. 
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