Country Life
By IAN NIALL
PADDLE-FOOTED birds, ducks and seagulls are fitting enough creatures in their natural element. Ducks make a slippery, slimy mess at the edge of a pond but not much harm results, and gulls are wholesome on the tideline where they rightfully belong. The latter are prone to wandering and are not welcome on the fringes of reservoirs and lakes that are public water supplies, and in some cases men are employed to scare them from dams in case pollution and danger to public health results. In my part of the world gulls frequent mountain lakes, but many times more move inland to pick worms on the arable fields. Between whiles the gulls congregate in large flocks, and these flocks have now acquired a sinister significance, for it is thought that a particularly worrying outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease is due to the gulls. If this is not exactly so, it is held that the gulls were responsible for the outbreak spreading. No one who has studied the gull's gliding and sailing wants to think of it as a carrier of pestilence, but such a charge has been made and the gull that follows the tractor is not so benevolently looked upon in my part of Wales as it was a month or so ago, A threat to live- stock makes it about as much liked as the carrion crow at lambing time.
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