NEW BIRD HABITS.
Birds of many sorts learn new things, adapt new habits : I heard this year bitter complaints from an owner of Scottish moors that the black-backed—not this time the black-headed gulls—had altered much for the worse. They have become almost a land-bird instead of a sea-bird, living on the moors for a great part of their time and plaguing its inhabitants. They are without any question the savagest bird known to our island, sparing nothing that is weak enough and edible. They will kill even a full-grown mallard that is in any way wounded and have been known to rob even so great a beast as a seal of his prey : numbers of birds, owls, for example, and carrion crows, have come to enjoy town or suburb : an urban folk is imparting the urban mind even to the birds. In Canada, but not, so far as I know, in England, woodpeckers of several sorts have become urban. Perhaps we shall yet see black-backed gulls and spotted woodpeckers in St. James's
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