10 THE CONDOR Vol. XIX - beach. The large square crab boxes tied up at the wharf full of the huge squirming Tillamook crabs for which the country is noted, have to be securely rovered to keep the Gulls out, for as the fisherman told me, "they swipe a crab as quirk as they would a elam." While the Gulls have to be reckoned with in such minor ways, the villages, as the people fully realize, would be uninhabitable were it not for the birds. In the fall the sahnon that have come into Tillamook Bay go up the creeks to spawn and when they die are washed down by the high water along the creeks and along the shore, sometimes, as the f?sherman assured me, "you might say by the thousands"; and he added realistically, "I've seen the little creeks so thick you couldn't see the bottom." At this perilous moment the Gulls gather, and aet;ng as scavengers save the day for the villagers. A large salmon run was predicted the year of my visit because the water was deep on the bar-- twenty-one feet at low tide--so that the fish could get in easily. The Tiila- mook squaws endorsed the prediction because--there was a large crop of sal- ?non berries ! In the dull season the Gulls sometimes steal 'fish from their Cormorant neighbors, expert divers who come up with small fry temptingly exposed in their bills. When down on the shore one day, hearing a hoarse cry I looked up just in time to see one of the black-bodied Cormorants shake off a white-breast.- ed Gull and then raise its bill and swallow, its ratch safe from all pilferers. It was interesting to watch a Cormorant come down the bay, flying stead- ily low over the water with its long neck curved up, to light heavy bodied and rapidly sink to a black hook, only its small head and long neck visible. When both Gulls and Cormorants were out in the bay the scene was always shifting. One moment there would be a row of black hooks and a row of white breasts. Then the black hooks would tip forward and Grebe-like disap- pear under the water. But if I glanced away, on looking back again, there would be the row of black hooks. Twenty-five Cormorants I counted in line at one time, but on the instant a band of Gulls unceremoniously plumped down among them and instead of the orderly black row, there was a confusion of white wings and black necks. Down the shore a white line of Gulls feeding on a mud flat would rise and shift back and forth calling, and when the flock finally broke up and drifted my way, a band passed over my head so white against the deep blue sky that it was a thrilling sight. Small squads scattered over the beach, one of them gath- ering around a little elam pile near by, the handsome adults with their pure white bodies, dark gray mantles, and yellow bills, the young with mottled brownish bodies and black bills. One poor bird with a broken leg peeked at the already emptied shells in a desultory manner, but the rest for the most part stood around playing or teasing each other, crying out in loud Gull tones with their wild sea qua!ity. An occasional Barn Swallow went skimming low over the beach, the beach where lay old gray logs higher than I could reach, dethroned monarchs from the noble mountain forest up the roast, and below them the sand was wreathed with streamers of fine green seaweed that had drifted in with the tide, ripple marks, Gull tracks, and empty elam shells each adding a line to the complex, fascinating story of the meeting of these children of mountain, sea, and air. Down along the water's edge, oblivious of the crowds of Gulls and rows of Cormorants, a Great Blue Heron, a solitary fisherman absorbed in his pursuit,
