Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/90

60 them passive protection, or, at any rate, do not show annoyance when one, bolder than the rest, filches a small fish from a pile upon the beach, and will often throw an attractive piece of gut towards the envious herring-gulls. Perhaps there are other reasons. In a land where belief in the "little people" still lingers, it is possible that education has not eliminated the ancient fable that the beautiful birds, their constant companions, may be reincarnations of long-lost friends.

At Beer a stream runs down the steep street and dives beneath the shingle beach through a culvert. Of course, it is not a sewer, but an open brook is a temptation, and all sorts of discarded scraps are borne seaward. Some yards from the beach is the outfall, where the fresh water bubbles up even when the tide is full; at this spot a little gathering collects, herrings and black-heads, rising and falling on the waves or hovering a few feet above to watch for any edible morsel which may float to the surface. It is not a peaceful gathering, and when one red bill has seized an ascending treasure the corvine calls of annoyance from other black-heads suggest a rookery rather than a congregation of gulls. Some of the herring-gulls are smarter than their smaller companions, and by clumsy dives succeed in securing the still submerged scraps. Black-heads will remain fighting for these uncertain bits of refuse when piles of tempting offal lie on the beach, awaiting the next cleansing tide, but common and herring gulls wait on the fishermen and follow the auctioneer from pile to pile of fish.

Along the wet sands of Tor Bay the razor-shell hunters walk backward with short steps of bare feet, basket on back and probe in hand; they feel the shells beneath their feet, and perhaps bring them to the surface as the deadly "jumbo" brings up the cockles. So, too, the herring gulls understand the art of paddling. In the tide wash