HERRING GULLS 
All along the American coastline, wherever refuse or shell-fish are avail¬ 
able, the pearly gray and white herring gulls soar gracefully through the 
air, screaming as they glide and wheel. These birds do not dive for live 
fish, but will dart down to seize a dead one or a tasty bit of harbor refuse 
floating on the water’s surface. Gifted with rapid digestion and an enormous 
appetite, a gull has been known to devour a fish equal its weight within 
ten minutes. Although useful to man as a scavenger, appreciably reducing 
the pollution of our harbors, gulls are regarded as enemies by Maine 
fishermen who accuse them of consuming thousands of young lobsters each 
year. Gulls will often seize oysters, bear them high into the air, and then 
drop them on the rocks to crack their shells. In Martha’s Vineyard, Massa¬ 
chusetts, the gulls have learned to use the concrete highway for this pur¬ 
pose, causing some inconvenience to motorists. The voracious birds attack 
ospreys to steal their prey. By no means fussy in their diet, gulls also eat 
rats, mice and insects. 
Gulls usually make a nest of grasses, moss or seaweed on the ground 
and only in areas where they have been repeatedly robbed will they nest 
in a tree. These tree nests may be as high as fifty feet from the ground. 
The female lays three grayish, olive-brown eggs, covered with blotches 
and scrawls. The downy, mottled young are entirely dependent on their 
parents until they have developed full plumage and the power of flight. 
During the first year they are brown in color, but in the second year they 
acquire the snow-white breast and slate-colored back and wings character¬ 
istic of their parents. 
Franklin’s gull, a bird sometimes found in the interior of North 
America, has a monument dedicated to it. The grateful citizens of Salt 
Lake City, Utah, erected the monument in grateful commemoration of 
services rendered by this bird in destroying grasshoppers that plagued the 
surrounding country. Another species came to the relief of locust-ridden 
Nicaraguans who for some months had watched the destruction of their 
corn, rice and bean crops. They were finally relieved when thousands of 
gulls flew in from the Pacific and began eating the locusts. 
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