The Short-hilled Gull 
supply of food is more limited. One may see at a glance that they are not 
fitted for competition. Their bills are not only shorter, but much more 
delicately proportioned than those of the other gulls; while their gabbling, 
duck-like notes oppose a mild alto to the screams and high trumpetings 
of their larger congeners. 
Gulls of this and allied species are quick 
to appreciate the advantages of protected 
areas. Along the water front, or near 
steamers, where shooting would not be al¬ 
lowed, they become very bold. Short-bills, 
however, do not stand about on palings, 
and piles, and roofs, as do the Westerns, 
but rest, instead, almost exclusively on the 
water. Thus, if one attempts to bait the 
gulls with an offering of bread laid on the 
wharf-rail, the larger gulls will begin to 
line the neighboring rails and posts, craning 
their necks hungrily, or snatching exposed 
fragments; but the Short-bills will settle 
upon the water and draw near to the piling below, con¬ 
tent to catch such crumbs as fall from the high-set table. 
Away from the city the gulls become increasingly wary, 
for no other reason than that sneaks with guns will do 
what the law forbids, as often as they think themselves safe from observa¬ 
tion. Once a gull is killed or wounded, its companions hover about it 
with piteous cries, momentarily forgetful of their own danger, or indifferent 
to it, as they urge their fallen comrade to escape. This sympathetic trait 
is, of course, taken advantage of by the Fourth-of-July sportsman (?), 
whose only requirements are noise and something to shoot at. 
Gregariousness admits of every degree, from the momentary exhibi¬ 
tion of sympathy, or the chance assemblage of hawks in migration, to 
those perfectly timed evolutions of sandpeeps or sparrows which are at 
once our admiration and our despair. The larger species of gulls fore¬ 
gather closely at nesting time or struggle en masse at the garbage dump; 
but in flight they are independent or only casual in their associations. 
The smaller species, on the other hand, sometimes exhibit genuine flock 
impulses. Such an example 1 once beheld at Santa Barbara, where a 
flock of some 200 of these Mews, all immature, lay off-shore under a 
strong breeze. Something frightened them and, rising upon the instant 
en masse, they moved off in close order, wheeled and turned, and presently 
settled again with a discipline as perfect as that displayed by a flock 
of plovers. Some feathered Wellington must have had that youthful 
Taken in Washington 
Photo by the A uthor 
HOVERING DOVES’ 
T 4 T 9 
