The sprite who watches over sailors sometimes throws a good luck glance at the juvenile ornithologist.
Even the prospect of a real old Thanksgiving dinner could not keep me at home, in those days. Wednesday night found us eating supper in an oysterman's deserted shack on Great South Bay.
There were plenty of musty blankets and we slept serenely with youthful indifference to springless beds.
When we made the beach in the neutral light of a November dawn, it was covered with jettisoned cargo from some vessel. Thousands of oranges, apples, cabbages (no kings!) lettuce and turkey!
Beyond a thoro soaking the bird seemed all right and we proved it by cooking some slices over the little shanty stove. Altho graces and trimmings of a well-appointed table were absent, we enjoyed that meal. While smoking in front of the open window overlooking the bay, a BLACKBACK GULL swung lazily across and I got him with a charge of number four shot. From the shack to where he lay on the bar, was eighty-three yards and a single shot had entered his brain thru an eye corner! For years he was the most imposing member of my collection of mounted birds.
On their breeding grounds they are noisy, dominant tyrants and only Eider Ducks dare nest in the vicinity. The soft-voiced kuk kuk kuk I have heard in Winter but the series of oo oo calls that commences low and ascends in trumpet intensity, seems reserved for their northern range.
Bent says their resemblance to the Bald Eagle is striking. Anyone who has watched them spiraling slowly against the blue, with black backs, white heads and tails glinting in the sunlight, will admit the simile is perfect.
Coasts and islands of North Atlantic. South in Winter regularly to New Jersey.