t man and an ardent Audubonite, asked me into his
sitting-room and told me a lot about his gulls.

In the spring, the first of them come back in March, sometimes arriving
in a snowstorm. They keep to the shore most of the time, but fuss
around a little, pulling old nests to pieces or making new ones. About
the first of May, they move up to the centre of the island. There are
three or four thousand of them, and not quite half as many nests. By
the middle of May the first egg may be expected, and in the second week
of June the first gray chick puts out his big head. A week later the
brood is all hatched and the parental troubles begin.

"The old birds," says Mr. Stanley, "do not fail to provide food for
their young, although as the birds get large the old ones have to go
sometimes many miles to do it, but, as a general thing, there is plenty
for them. I have watched them coming back at night, appearing very
tired, flying very low, one behind the other. They would light near
where the young should be and call, and the chicks would rush up to the
old bird and pick its bill; after the proper time the old bird will
stretch out its neck, and up will come a mess of almost everything,
from bread to sea-cucumbers, livers, fish (all the small kind). If
there is anything left after the feast the old bird will swallow it
again. Woe betide the young bird that belongs to a neighbour, who tries
to fill up at the wrong place! I have seen a young bird killed by one
blow from the old bird's bill, his head torn in two. As the young birds
grow, the old birds bring them larger fish to swallow. We have a few
old birds who know the time we feed the hens, and when that time draws
near they are on hand to dine with the hens."

By the latter part of August, having done their duties, the old birds,
the white ones, begin to leave the island. The dingy youngsters are
slower to forsake their Eden of innocence, lingering on beside the
unsullied waters and beneath the crystalline skies until the frosts of
late September warn them that winter is at hand. Then the last of the
colony take flight, winging their way southward leisurely and
comfortably, putting in at many a port where fish are cleaned and
scraps are thrown overboard, until they arrive at their chosen harbour
by some populous and smoke-clouded city, and learn to dodge the
steamboats and swim in troubled waters.

So the Gull Paradise is deserted by all but its guardians. The school
distric