Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 284, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1919 — Students of Right of Birds Give Gull of "Master of the Air” [ARTICLE]

Students of Right of Birds Give Gull of "Master of the Air”

A student of the flight of birds is inclined to give the title of ’’master of the air” to the gull, which often follows a ship at sea and lives on the scraps thrown from the galley. No other bird, he says, performs such seemingly impossible feats of flight or looks so completely at home in the air. Sometimes, by the perfect adjustment of their bodies, the gulls will poise on outstretched wings and appear to defy the laws of gravitation by remaining perfectly motionless; or, again, they may be seen moving without if single visible effort, straight against a gale of wind. -“Their flight IS altogether different from that of the Caspian tern, which IS as graceful as it is unusual. “Unlike that of any other birds, whether of sea or land,” says some one who has watched the terns, “it reminds one a little of the high, apparently uncertain flight of a large-winged butterfly; and It is in perfect harmony with the idea of a being where life,is spent amid wind and mist and fluctuating wave."