. The birds of California : a complete, scientific and popular account of the 580 species and subspecies of birds found in the state. Birds; Birds. The California Gull world. Oh, it is a tragic time, when you think of it! A thousand births in a day in a single community, and another thousand expected on the morrow. Little time and scant welcome for visitors on such a day. Prudence and good sense bid an early retirement, and I wish I had seen less rather than more. But what an armed truce is there also! Call it a "community"? To be sure the birds crowd together as close as they dare,
. The birds of California : a complete, scientific and popular account of the 580 species and subspecies of birds found in the state. Birds; Birds. The California Gull world. Oh, it is a tragic time, when you think of it! A thousand births in a day in a single community, and another thousand expected on the morrow. Little time and scant welcome for visitors on such a day. Prudence and good sense bid an early retirement, and I wish I had seen less rather than more. But what an armed truce is there also! Call it a "community"? To be sure the birds crowd together as close as they dare, and they act together in facing a common foe. But why do they crowd together? For every beak is turned against every other beak, and the space between nests is guaranteed in every instance to be greater than the distance which can be bridged by two craning necks tipped by two pairs of hostile mandibles. Crabbed tempers have these California Gulls, and the brandished beak is the sign of welcome and the notice of departure to any other of their own kind save their wedded partners, and not infre- quently to them also. In conspicuous exception to this churlish behavior, I recall two birds whom we dubbed "the lovers," which during the whole period of our review (I was changing plates under the most awkward circumstances at the Black Rocks colony), stood side by side with their bodies in actual contact (such as birds rarely allow), the very picture of amiability. Perhaps gull nature varies as much as human nature, and there are happy exceptions to the universal grouch. A close student of comparative psychology or of the comparative philology of gulls would have profited by a week's residence among these birds. In general, I may say that the appearance and behavior of these. Taken in Mono County THE PEACEFUL ISLES. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these il
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1923
