Herring Gull 
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well grown and strong of wing, the drake joins 
the family, one flock joins another, and the 
ducks begin their long journey southward. 
But very few children, even in Canada, can ever 
hope to know them in their inaccessible swampy 
homes. 
HERRING GULL 
Called also: Winter Gull 
“Every child” who has crossed the ocean or 
even a New York ferry in winter, knows the big, 
pearly-gray and white gulls that come from north- 
ern nesting grounds in November, just before 
the ice locks their larder, to spend the winter 
about our open waterways. On the great 
lakes and the larger rivers and harbours along 
our coast, you may see the scattered flocks 
sailing about serenely on broad, strong wings, 
gliding and skimming and darting with a poetry 
of motion few birds can equal. There are at 
least three things one never tires of watching: 
the blaze of a wood Are, the breaking of waves 
on a beach, and the flight of a flock of gulls. 
Not many years ago gulls became alarmingly 
scarce. Why? Because silly girls and women, 
to follow fashion, trimmed their hats with gull’s 
wings until hundreds of thousands of these 
