Inland Gulls
It is interesting to watch the gulls, which now frequent ploughland far inland, in their attitude to horse and tractor. They follow the tractor-drawn ploughs more closely, indeed so closely that the mould-board sometimes half buries them, as if they had been swimming under a breaking wave. They do a deal of good and very little harm, unless the diminution of worms is regarded as harmful; and indeed cultivated land needs a plentiful colony of worms as we see after land has been flooded or when it is reclaimed from the sea. The gulls that follow the plough are now of greater variety than they used to be. The little neat, black-headed gull, which greatly outnumbers other species in London, is joined by the large herring gull and even by the so-called common gull. They were attracted, so far as my experience goes, first by the dumps, which perhaps they scented from afar, and thence to the sweet-smelling tilths. Happily they come inland too late to destroy the nests of partridges, though they begin to prove serious enemies to the grouse on some northern moors within sight of the sea.
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