1 64 
THE CONDOR 
| VOL. VII 
posed foe seems to be only a friendly visitor. The gull is soon forgotten, as at- 
tention's taken up with others sailing overhead. The cormorant will never leave 
her nest unguarded, unless frightened away by a person. The instant she does 
leave, is the opportunity the gull is waiting for. He walks up, cocks his head on 
one side and inspects the unguarded nest with the air of a connoisseur. At times, 
I have seen him jab through the shell and devour the contents on the spot. Again 
I have seen him pick up an egg, swallow it whole or make off with it in his bill. 
On one occasion, I saw a gull pick up a small cormorant nestling by the wing, give 
it a shake and start to swallow it alive. It wouldn’t go down crosswise, but lie 
grasped the kicking youngster by the head and gulped him down; the downward 
passage of the little fellow was marked by a bulge in the throat, till he found a 
temporary resting place in the crop, where he looked to me quite out of place. 
Twice after that, I saw gulls swallow young birds, that seemed to me as large as 
their own heads. I have seen a gull pick up a murre’s egg, large as it is, hold it 
firmly in its mouth and fly away. I never saw a gull with a bill strong enough to 
penetrate the shell of a murre’s egg, but they know enough to drop the egg to a 
rock below' and devour the contents. 
When the young cormorants are too large for the gull to eat, if he finds them 
unprotected, the white thief will get a meal by making the youngsters disgorge. 
Often when you approach a squad of young cormorants ora nest full of gulls, they 
will begin vomiting in all directions and then take to their heels, as if they knew 
exactly what you wanted. 
One day we were climbing along the ledges with our cameras, when a commo- 
tion above attracted our attention. A gull was furiously darting downward with 
an angry scream, evidently in battle with some other bird. The opponent was too 
far above to be in sight, but at each swoop of the gull, we could see they were 
drawing nearer the brink. A moment later, we saw a half-grown cormorant 
scrambling and flapping wildly to hold on the steep crumbly surface. At the next 
swoop, the gull clipped him on the neck and the momentum swept him over. The 
victim was heavier in body than the gull, but undeveloped and helpless on the 
wing. Down he flopped with a rumble and rattle of shale, bumping on the ragged 
rocks of the different ledges, catching an instant in a niche only to be knocked 
off by his remorseful pursuer. I saw him land a hundred feet below with a crash, 
square in the middle of a crowded ledge of murres. There was the commotion of 
an explosion in that peaceful community; such a grunting and squawking as a 
hundred pair of wings swept out over the sea. The poor cormorant, battered and 
bruised, was still alive. Before he had time to collect his senses, the flight of dis- 
turbed murres came rushing back. The gull was forced to abandon his victim, 
who had dropped plump into a veritable hornet’s nest. The unfortunate black 
youngster was stung right and left, fore and aft, by the sharp bill-thrusts of the 
mad murres. He ambled out of there with about as much vigor as he landed, and 
limped to the top of a bowlder, where he was left in peace. We found him still 
there in the afternoon, too sore and scared to move. As he sat there blinking and 
shuddering, it seemed to penetrate his inexperienced brain, that he had met with 
one of the hardest streaks of luck that anything in feathers had struck. Our sym- 
pathy went out to him and I bundled him under my arm and carried him back to 
the top of the rock, where I laid him down in a nest with five more that looked 
exactly like him. 
It is a common occurrence for young birds to fall over the ledges of the cliff, 
where the population is so crowded. Late one afternoon, while preparing our 
