. Birds that hunt and are hunted; life histories of one hundred and seventy birds of prey, game birds and water fowls . scavengers. Rapacious feeders, tyrannicalto smaller birds that they can rob of their prey, and possessed ofinsatiable appetites for any food, whether fresh or putrid, thatcomes in their reach, the gulls alternately fascinate by their graceand animation in the marine picture, and repel by the coarsenessof their instincts. However, it is churlish to find fault with thescavengers that help so largely in keeping our beaches free fromputrifying rubbish. Doubtless the birds themsel
. Birds that hunt and are hunted; life histories of one hundred and seventy birds of prey, game birds and water fowls . scavengers. Rapacious feeders, tyrannicalto smaller birds that they can rob of their prey, and possessed ofinsatiable appetites for any food, whether fresh or putrid, thatcomes in their reach, the gulls alternately fascinate by their graceand animation in the marine picture, and repel by the coarsenessof their instincts. However, it is churlish to find fault with thescavengers that help so largely in keeping our beaches free fromputrifying rubbish. Doubtless the birds themselves, as theirname implies, would prefer herrings were they always available. Unlike the other gulls, this one, where it has been persist-ently robbed, sometimes nests in trees, and, adapting its archi-tecture to the exigencies of the situation, constructs a compactlybuilt and bulky home, often fifty feet from the ground, andpreferably in a fir or other evergreen. Ordinarily a coarse, loosemat of moss, grasses, and seaweed is laid directly on the groundor on a rocky cliff near the sea. Two or three grayish olive 40. Gulls brown, sometimes whitish, eggs, spotted, blotched, and scrawledwith brown, are laid in June. In the nesting grounds the her-ring gulls are shy of men and fierce in defending their mates andyoung, to whom they are especially devoted. Akak, kakak theyscream or bark at the intruder, making a din that is fairly deaf-ening. Before the summer is ended the baby gulls will have learnedto breast a gale, sleep with head tucked under wing whenrocked on the cradle of the deep, and follow a ship for the ref-use thrown overboard, like any veteran. They are the grayishbrown birds which one can readily pick out in a flock of adultswhen they migrate to our coasts in winter. Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) Length— to inches. Male and Fe?na!e—Mantle over back and wings light pearl color,rest of plumage white except in winter, when the head andnape are spotted
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Keywords: ., book, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectuplandgamebirds
