reflect reds, blues, and lavenders of a setting sun, and now 
condense all colors into a pearl-white that makes them 
visible for miles. No minuet on marble floors was ever 
danced with more stately grace than the rhythmic move- 
ments of the gulls as they weave back and forth, across and 
around, or pause, motionless, to salute their partners. | 
_ Other gulls appear to select particular places as a home _ 
‘site, and they will sun themselves on a chosen stone pile, 
or railing, hours at a time. One such bird, a Glaucous-wing, 
is known to several people as Billy and has lived for a 
- number of years about a small bay on Puget Sound which 
is left bare at low tide, except for the winding creek which 
- then cuts a new channel, daily, through the sand. The coral- 
like roots of an old tree fastened upside down in the shadow 
O13 huge cedar is Billy’s “look-out,” and usually, no other 
gull is permitted by him to place foot upon its smooth 
surface. When the tide is in a pair of Marbled Murrelets, 
a White-winged Scoter an American Scaup Duck, or a Pigeon | 
Guillemot, may float near, as he stands on guard, but the 
white throne is his, alone. This April, however, he permits 
a gull, still trimmed with much gray, which shows she is a 
giddy young thing, to sit, humbly, at his feet on a lower 
root, and probably she has been chosen as a mate to x0) 
with him to an island that she knows in the Pacific. _ 
_ Billy, as he takes a bath or makes his toilet, is worth 
seeing. His scow-like lower body, held level on his pink | 
legs which seem to be wearing gay garters, is not so hand- — 
some as when he floats in air or water, but he is as dainty 
with it as a cat or a dandy. As he lifts a bunch of feathers © 
on his breast, runs his long wing through the edges of his 
pill, or twists his neck and head over his back, his every | 
pose is a picture, but his sharp eyes are always on the watch | 
for friends or enemies, and to make that picture permanent | 
in your camera takes skill. 
When the tide is in, Billy fends on the smelt or other 
small fish which the sea brings him, throwing back his — 
fe 
