[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—In reply to Mr. B. E. Westbury may I suggest that the loss of a leg or legs in our river gulls is due either to fish (pike or eels most probably) or to rats? To the former when the gulls are swimming, and to the latter when they are roosting. During their winter sojourn in London these "black-headed gulls" mostly roost in meadows up river, somewhere above Staines. - It is at this season that rats are most likely to be the culprits. In summer they nest on marshes, and inland waters, where pike and eels are -likely to abound.
_ London gulls pick up their living largely from scraps of food or offal floating on the river, but a staple diet in winter appears to be some minute organism procurable in the river mud at low-tide.
How a legless bird deprived of its webbed feet could propel itself through the water or procure its food in the mud is
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