Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 43, Vol. I, October 25, 1884

No. 43.—Vol. I.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1884.
Walking one wintery day along the promenade of a well-known Lancashire watering-place, a large notice-board at the entrance of the pier attracted our attention. A closer inspection showed that it bore the announcement: ‘Feeding the sea-gulls from the pier-head every day at noon.’ Curious to see what manner of performance this might be, we paid the entrance-money, took a ticket for the tram-carriage which was just about to start, and speedily found ourselves being whirled smoothly along towards the end of the ‘first pier,’ as it is called, which stretches across the sands for something like three-quarters of a mile towards the deep channel. A short walk was necessary before reaching the end of the extension pier, and there we found numbers of visitors congregated, all, like ourselves, evidently waiting for the performance to begin. Around, lay huge baskets of fish-offal; but where were the expected guests? On every side, far as the eye could reach, was a long expanse of flat sand, merging into the sea-line, with not a vestige of rock to afford foothold or shelter for wild-fowl of any kind. Yet, stay. By the margin of the waves, where it is now low water, are what look like huge glistening white boulders, forming a continuous boundary, whose snowy surface reflects the light, and glitters and flashes under the rays of a December sun, set in so blue a sky as more nearly to approach that of Italy than any we have yet seen in our sombre-tinted British Isles.
Twelve o’clock strikes; a piercing whistle sounds, and even while we are watching, these granite boulders—as, despite the geological formation of the place, we persist in fancying them to be—literally take to themselves wings, and fly towards us, a nearer approach showing them to be vast aggregations of sea-gulls, which have been waiting till the appointed signal should summon them to dine. No transformation scene in a pantomime ever took place with more startling rapidity. Round the pier-head, where all had been still and quiet, was now the bustle and whirring noise made by countless gulls, each one intent upon getting a share of the good things provided. On they come; now swooping along in graceful flight right down to the surface of the water, anon darting aloft with the coveted prize; poised momentarily in mid-air, to see where a descent may most profitably be made, or engaged in a keen struggle for the possession of some particularly toothsome morsel. The whirl and commotion and changing beauty of the scene, it were impossible to describe. Rendered tame by having experimentally proved that the food scattered is no mere decoy meant to lure them to destruction, but the outcome of an honest effort for their sustenance and protection, they come so close as to afford every opportunity for studying their free and graceful flight and the beauty of their form and colour.