Now for the second curiosity. This also comes from Kew
Gardens, where the Director and his gardeners have time to observe other than merely botanical aspects of the Gardens. On an ordinary day in any autumn or winter month you will not find in the Gardens more than a few stray gulls. The flocks are elsewhere, many among the crowds of people along the embankment or in St. James's Park. But visit Kew on Saturday afternoon (though the phenomenon is rather less well emphasized then) or at any hour on Sunday. You will find as many blackheaded gulls there as at St. James's. They conic to meet the people, from whom they expect food ; but they arrive in considerable numbers rather before the visitors. It is not true that the news travels up the river that food is going. The birds apparently know—and their ways have been carefully observed—that such and such things occur on particular days of the week. It has often been argued that colonies of rooks know their Sunday. Game preservers and hunters snake a like claim for horses, foxes and game-birds ; but is there any stronger evidence for such prescience in these sapient animals than the blackheaded gulls supply in their early Sunday morning visits to Kew Gardens ?
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