BY THE WAYSIDE 
39 
tor and victim are in air, the latter be¬ 
ing held firmly in crosswise fashion by 
the bill of the gull. With a dexterous 
swish of the head the bird adjusts the 
prize to a convenient position for swal¬ 
lowing, and with a gulp the gull re¬ 
ceives the fish, head foremost, into its 
stomach. Occasionally, .a fish may 
wriggle away from the grasp of the 
gull, but ere it again strikes the water, 
it is snatched up only to be held with 
a firmer grasp than before. The gulls 
do not practice this to excess, resorting 
to diving for fish only when there is a 
lack of available fish refuse to be had. 
Gulls congregate in large numbers 
on Gravel Island in Lake Michigan, a 
secluded and barren spot located off 
the northeastern point of Door County. 
The nesting season begins in May 
and the young are brought forth in 
June. As each female lays not more 
than three eggs, we can readily see 
that any encroachment of man will re¬ 
tard the multiplication of these birds 
jr 
most decidedly. The young come into 
the world, and into a home made prac¬ 
tically out of nothing but a few twigs 
and See-weed scattered between the 
rocks or gravel. The young are 
B 
guarded quite closely by their parents 
during the early period of growth, but 
they are soon forced to shift for them- 
’ selves and this stage of their growth 
marks a period when many lose their 
lives by starvation or heartless attacks 
of unfriendly gulls. The encroach¬ 
ment of man does not figure as promin¬ 
ently in the section mentioned as in 
other portions of the Great Lake Le¬ 
gion. It has taken a long time to 
awaken the American people to the 
fact that the beautiful creatures of the 
air are a part of God’s kingdom, and 
our inheritance, and that their heedless 
destruction by pot and plume hunters, 
poachers, or meandering hunters shoot- 
| ing for the “fun of it,” is a crime 
against the state and nation. 
NOTE: The above account from a 
University of Wisconsin man who has 
lived all his life about the Wisconsin 
breeding grounds of the Herring Gull 
(Lams argentatus) holds: 
“The bird can dive out of sight for 
live fish and yet the fishermen maintain 
it does not eat enough live fish to war¬ 
rant objection to its protection.” From 
the literature and conversations, these 
points appear to be widely contested, 
hence the need of more observers. 
A. C. Burrill. 
(Uoniinued from page ii(>) 
snows came and were blown into deep 
drifts that sealed the fate of many a 
covey of bobwliites; even those that 
were semi-domesticated and came to 
the farmers ’ pens to feed with the pigs, 
or staid about the door yard, eating 
with the chickens and sleeping at night 
under the evergreen trees, were made 
restless by the blustering storms and 
left tlieir sheltered retreats to be seen 
no more. In 1911 but one bobwliite 
was seen and heard in the whole year, 
where three years previous several 
were observed every day through-out 
the summer. For frequent glimpses of 
another game bird, the prairie chicken, 
the winter months are the best ones of 
the year; since at that time the birds 
are ranging the open fields in search of 
food. A few scattering flocks of this 
species may be found, where the farm 
owners have been disposed to protect 
them. 
Three species of the woodpecker 
family can be found with us every win¬ 
ter: the hairy, and downy, and in the 
thick woods the loud-voiced northern 
pileated woodpeckers, which are fre¬ 
quently heard by the men who are at 
work in their neighborhood. Rarely a 
red-headed woodpecker spends the win¬ 
ter here, generally near a farm-house, 
that has wooded surroundings, where 
the bird ekes out a living from food 
thrown to the chickens. Most of our 
winter birds appear partial to a diet of 
