The California Gull 
world. Oh, it is a tragic time, when you think of it! A thousand births 
in a day in a single community, and another thousand expected on the 
morrow. Little time and scant welcome for visitors on such a day. 
Prudence and good sense bid an early retirement, and I wish 1 had seen 
less rather than more. 
But what an armed truce is there also! Call it a “community”? To 
be sure the birds crowd together as close as they dare, and they act 
together in facing a common foe. But why do they crowd together? For 
every beak is turned against every other beak, and the space between 
nests is guaranteed in every instance to be greater than the distance 
which can be bridged by two craning necks tipped by two pairs of hostile 
mandibles. Crabbed tempers have these California Gulls, and the 
brandished beak is the sign of welcome and the notice of departure to 
any other of their own kind save their wedded partners, and not infre¬ 
quently to them also. In conspicuous exception to this churlish behavior, 
I recall two birds whom we dubbed “the lovers,” which during the whole 
period of our review (I was changing plates under the most awkward 
circumstances at the Black Rocks colony), stood side by side with their 
bodies in actual contact (such as birds rarely allow), the very picture of 
amiability. Perhaps gull nature varies as much as human nature, and 
there are happy exceptions to the universal grouch. 
A close student of comparative psychology or of the comparative 
philology of gulls would have profited by a week’s residence among these 
birds. In general. I may say that the appearance and behavior of these 
Taken in Mono County 
Photo by the A uthor 
THE PEACEFUL ISLES 
1411 
