. Bird lore . : ka-ah; ke-hah; ha; ha-ha; ha-ha-ha; ke-a-hah. Several times,too, their strange laughter, not unlike the ordinary call-note, but much pro-longed, sounded over the marsh. 206 Bird-Lore Presently some of the Gulls began to hover about the more distant nests,generally making a false start or two before venturing to alight. Then oneby one they dropped upon the edges of the nests, twitched their wings for acouple of moments as if to fix them smoothly in position, and remained fora time erect and alert; at last, becoming sufficiently reassured, they settleddown upon their eggs, so tha
. Bird lore . : ka-ah; ke-hah; ha; ha-ha; ha-ha-ha; ke-a-hah. Several times,too, their strange laughter, not unlike the ordinary call-note, but much pro-longed, sounded over the marsh. 206 Bird-Lore Presently some of the Gulls began to hover about the more distant nests,generally making a false start or two before venturing to alight. Then oneby one they dropped upon the edges of the nests, twitched their wings for acouple of moments as if to fix them smoothly in position, and remained fora time erect and alert; at last, becoming sufficiently reassured, they settleddown upon their eggs, so that little more than their black heads and snowynecks appeared above the grass-tops. Meanwhile, some of the others, singlyor in pairs, swam on the pool with the peculiar feathery lightness that so oftenarouses our admiration in a Gull, whether awing or afloat. -J Two birds, at length, commenced to fly closer and closer to the nest infront of the blind, and, at the end of three-quarters of an hour or thereabouts,. NEST AND EGGS OF LAUGHING GULL one of them (probably the female) alighted. Though frightened away morethan once, either by the movements of my companion at the other end of thecolony or by the noisy release of my focal-plane shutter, she returned withoutundue delay and began to incubate. I now had opportunity not only to exposeplate after plate, but to observe at leisure the Laughing Gulls graceful sym-metry and its rare beauty of plumage. Its dark reddish bill, black head andwhite-bordered eye, snow-white neck and breast, and pearl-gray, black-tipped wings, show to particular advantage in an autochrome exposed forfour seconds on the motionless bird. At a loud outcry from the sitting Gull, I peeped through a slit in the tentin time to catch a momentary glimpse of a skulking Clapper Rail, whose Observations in a Laughing Gull Colony 207 comical impudence in stepping directly past the nest, at scarcely a yardsdistance, had thus aroused the very justifiable resentment of th
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbirds, booksubjectorn
