boat. As one approaches, one is met a mile away by a gull or two circling overhead and screaming vociferously, followed by more and more gulls until the air is filled with a whirling, darting throng of gray and white birds. It is noticeable, here as elsewhere, that gulls are much noisier on the wing than on shore or on water. So alert and so ready are they to announce an intruder that they have well been called "chipmunks of the sea". About a thousand gulls are resident in the Yellowstone and practically all of them nest on Molly Island. Their nests are scattered in among those of the pelicans, but the gulls prefer the higher parts as a rule and leave the lower beaches to the larger birds. The nests of the gulls are a little the more pretentious, being formed roughly of grass stems with from one to three rather dark lavender eggs marked with black in an irregular manner. The gulls begin nesting from about May 15 to 25 and often before the ice has left the lake; the young gulls are hatched early in June, are covered with down of a gray color dotted with black, and are very difficult to see against a background of sand and gravel. They can run about almost as soon as they emerge from the shell, and are so adept at hiding that I did not become aware of their abundance on my first visit. Not until I retired under a blind and the little ones began to respond to the parents' calls did I really begin to see them. The young gulls, themselves, have a shrill, whining call.
The gulls eat fish that they find dead, sometimes they rob the mergansers before the latter have a chance to swallow their catch; and many of the gulls resort regularly to the hotel garbage piles. While the bears are present, the birds sweep by in circles uttering their piercing screams; often they swoop down until they seem to miss the bears' backs by only a few inches. When the bears have satisfied their hunger and leave, the gulls settle down in a white cloud and soon clean up what bruin has left. At times when the gulls were resting on the water, I have seen one jump up two or three feet and plunge forward into the water. What they do this for, I cannot tell positively, but they seem to be feeding.
Most noticeable of the water-birds of the Yellowstone, by virtue of his great beauty either when swimming or when flying past is the White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos). On the water the pelican is grace personified. With head bent back and close to his shoulders, and with his deep pouch tucked away between chin and throat, he moves majestically along like a ship under gull sail. Pure white except for the black wing-tips, he can be seen and recognized at an astonishing distance away. In flight, he is still more majestic. The main auto road runs beside the Yellowstone River at one point, and here the birds have become so used to the passing machines that they come near enough for the tourists to admire their great spread of wings (ten feet in some cases) and to hear the soft fluf-fluf of their pinions. The leader of a flock shows even better command than is the case with flying geese. Pelicans fly one behind the other, and, as a rule, vary their flapping flight with short periods of coasting upon deeply bowed wings. At the end of such a period, the leader loses headway first, possibly because he is subjected to air pressure that his followers do not feel, and recommences his wing-strokes first, followed shortly by the second bird; then the third and fourth take up the stroke after accurately timed intervals, and the entire line is finally in full, strong flight with wings beating together perfectly.
The pelican is an old form of bird-life that has come down to us little changed through long ages; certainly he existed before the first song-bird as
