The Glaucous-winged Gull 
muster on the made lands or open tide flats. Here their white battalions 
of rest afford a pleasing contrast to the squalor of commerce behind 
them. 
One marvels at the boldness these harbor gulls at times display, 
especially when a touch of winter has made us all akin. The man who 
minds his own business may sometimes pass within six feet of sitting 
birds-— pass, not pause. For let him stop but that fraction of an instant 
necessary to adjust a focus, and the wary birds are off, their minds 
poisoned by dark suspicion. When the great hunger is on, it is possible 
to bait the gulls to the camera in many ways; but when that aching void 
is filled, all direct efforts at acquaintance are futile. Thinking to effect an 
ensemble piece, 1 once dumped a keg of choice “seconds” from the rails 
of a packing house. The sun was bright, the camera set, and the focus 
chosen. The gulls burdened every pile and timber in the vicinity; and 
yet as that wanton meat floated on the tide, the pampered birds only 
leered foolishly at it, and resumed their meditations. 
But it is not alone as pensioners of the city’s untidy soup kitchen 
that we may know the gulls. Although undoubted children of the sea, 
the gulls have certain Limicoline affinities, which lead them to seek the 
vicinage of ponds and fresh-water shallows. That is to say, the ur-ancient 
ancestor of the gulls was a swamp-loving bird, and the gull is but answer¬ 
ing the primeval call when it forsakes the sea to idle about in flooded 
meadows or to haunt some alluvial bar. On a lush day in early spring I 
have seen hundreds of these adventurers pattering about the dank truck 
farms of the upper bay, now stopping to gaze at their images in the shallow 
mirrors of a recent rain, now wading into the ooze and treading it in an 
apparent ecstasy of delight over its squashiness. 
