. Wild nature's ways . singa goodly series of plates by the aid of my moresilent studio shutter upon the bird on and nearby her nest, crawled forth, scarcely able to walkhome to my friends house. In a day or two both species hatched outtheir young, and I noticed two habits apparentlycommon to them both. All egg shells were FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 257 removed thirty or forty yards, and nest de-pressions practically filled up by lining pebbleshaving rolled down. Doubtless the struggles ofthe chicks were answerable for the latter cir-cumstance. Not far away a small colony of common gullswere
. Wild nature's ways . singa goodly series of plates by the aid of my moresilent studio shutter upon the bird on and nearby her nest, crawled forth, scarcely able to walkhome to my friends house. In a day or two both species hatched outtheir young, and I noticed two habits apparentlycommon to them both. All egg shells were FRAGMENTS FROM THE SEASHORE. 257 removed thirty or forty yards, and nest de-pressions practically filled up by lining pebbleshaving rolled down. Doubtless the struggles ofthe chicks were answerable for the latter cir-cumstance. Not far away a small colony of common gullswere breeding on a rough rocky promontory, andI determined to try my skill upon the species. Somebody ill-acquainted with the qualities ofsea-gull mind once invented a slang phrase in-tended to be indicative of its extreme a matter of fact most of the members of thegull family are far too intelligent to be imposedupon, and theymake you painfullyaware of that factwhen you try tophotograph themat close 258 WILD NATURES WAYS. In order to secure the study of the specimenreproduced on the opposite page, I had to builda third house, and such was the file-hke sharpnessof the rocks over which I had to carry my buildingmaterials that the ruin of a pair of strong bootswas quite completed. One very breezy day I made a number ofexposures upon her from my place of conceal-ment, but the poor light and sea spray depositedon the lens, in addition to wind-ruffled plumage,rendered the negatives useless. This was nogreat disappointment to me, because the un-favourable weather had not allowed me to hopefor much that day, and the birds encouragingbehaviour had led me to do so for the came back to her nest fairly well, andever}^ whit of my experience with other specieswent to prove that she would grow bolderas time went on. j\ly surprise was thereforegreat when I afterwards discovered that she grewshyer day by day, and was gifted with suchwonderfully acute hearing powers
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