Hen eO) Uy BrOINe eR U-L lw TDN 15 
SouTtH BirpD ISLAND, Texas, a sanctuary of the National Audubon Society, 
is the only white pelican nesting colony on the Gulf of Mexico in the United 
States. ... Eider ducks once nested from Greenland far down the Atlantic 
coast. Their nests, which are lined with the famous eider down, were taken 
by ruthless hunters until the ducks became scarce. Now the eiders are mak- 
ing a comeback. The National Audubon Society reports the discovery of 
several eider nests on their sanctuary islands off the coast of Maine. 
—323 Kast Wesley, Wheaton, Illinois 
ft fi ft 
Shell Cracking Sea Gulls 
By SAMUEL I. KRUTY 
TAKE A SPRING trip to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, then via ferry to the 
picturesque island of Martha’s Vineyard. At the Moby Dick town of Oak 
Bluffs, rent a bicycle. Under a threatening late-spring sky. set out for 
Edgartown, a distance of six miles, with the surf of Vineyard Sound to 
your right and a smooth black top road ahead. At this point you will begin 
to feel the charming hypnosis of the island. Presently it begins to drizzle. 
The sun’s rays pierce through the heavy spring cloud bank here and there, 
lighting up patches of the ocean. In spots the water glows like the Florida 
Key flats — turquoise and emerald green. Far out to sea the sky is storm 
black. Sea gulls are plying the coast winds in all directions, creating strik- 
ing images of white against the dark back drop of sky. 
Several miles out of Oak Bluffs the road settles down to sea level and 
you find yourself bucking a fair wind on a strip of land between the Sound 
and Sengekontacket Pond. Ahead lies the tide cut bridge through which 
the salt pond tide ebbs and floods. As you approach the bridge you notice 
many broken shells in the road. They begin to pop under your bicycle tires. 
Closer inspection shows them to be small scallop shells of many and varied 
colors. Some are in perfect condition and still hinged. Your insatiable desire 
to collect things goes into action — you stop to pocket this beauty and that 
beauty. 
The mystery of how the shells got on the road and its shoulders is just 
beginning to ask for resolution in your mind when you spy a gull, strik- 
ingly framed against the dark storm sky, stroking heavily and rapidly 
with an exceedingly large whelk in his beak. He is trying to gain altitude 
with his burden. When at a height of about twenty five feet he veers over to 
the road, arrests all directional motion, as hawks do just before diving on 
their prey, and releases the whelk. It falls to the black top road with a 
resounding clap. The gull dives after his drop by a lag of about ten feet. 
Landing beside the broken shell, he calmly surveys it and then proceeds to 
peck and pull away the exposed mollusk meat. 
It is low tide. You become aware of several dozen gulls shell-fishing in 
shallow water. After capturing a mollusk, most of which are scallops (a 
quarter to a fifty-cent piece in size), each bird will fly to a height of about 
25 feet, arrest his forward velocity, and make a shell drop. 
After the initial awe of actually witnessing such a seemingly intelligent 
display of rational behavior, you soon notice a gull make a shell drop in the 
