walking on the shores of Puget Sound asked, as a pigeon 
flew above the waves, “What gull is that?’’ She was amazed 
to find that she should have recognized an old land acquain- 
tance, very different from any of the big birds that float 
on wide-spread wings above our cities. | 
On finding her mistake she said, “Well, a bird is a bird: | 
all birds I see about the water are gulls to me, and yet, I 
long to know these séaport residents. Is it not pitiful to 
think how much joy I have missed in not knowing such 
beautiful creatures as these that are my neighbors? I do. 
not know my own surroundings, and I miss so many of the 
strange Ways, sigs shapes, and colors that a few of oy 
friends enjoy.” | 
Her words might be repeated by many adalbe for even 
the men of the sea, who are followed day after day by these 
gulls know little about the varieties of birds that may at 
one time or another be found about their vessels. Dawson 
delightfully tells in his Birds of Washington that even the 
man in the pilot houses of the steamers “who knows buoys, 
harbor lights, and all proper kinds of seamanship like a 
book” will say, if asked about the many kinds of gulls there 
are to be seen on the waters they continually travel: “Why, 
there isn’t more than one kind, is there? Well, yes, mebbe 
they’s two kinds the dark ‘ones and the white ones; or mebbe 
they’s big and little ones.’ 
Yet a real student of oo and their ways, whose eyes 
have learned to catch in a second the glimpses of beauty 
and inspiration that come from an acquaintance with birds, 
will pick out not only eight or nine varieties of gulls, but 
possibly, he may show you how to recognize them and their 
close relatives: the rare Pacific kittiwake, the terns, and 
perhaps the jaegars, that torment their kindred, as all get 
their living from the food cast upon the waters of the West. 
This student could show you that nearly all the grown- 
up birds of these species, big and little, have a white and 
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