“In summer, in thick weather, the appearance of Gulls and Terns in numbers, or the sound of their clamorous voices, gives warning to the mariner that he is near the rocks on which they breed. Shore fishermen, enshrouded in fog, can tell the direction of the islands on which the birds live by watching their undeviating flight homeward with food for their young. The keen senses of sea-birds enable them to head direct for their nests, even in dense mist. “Navigators approaching their home ports during the seasons of bird migration welcome the appearance of familiar birds from the land. . . . “Sea-birds must be reckoned among the chief agencies which have made many rocky or sandy islands fit for human habitation. The service performed by birds in fertilizing, soil-building, and seed-sowing on many barren islands entitles our feathered friends to the gratitude of many a shipwrecked sailor, who must else have lost his life on barren, storm-beaten shores.” —E. H. Forbush. “Is mine a good grown-up Gull?” asked Bobbie, who had been waiting anxiously for its safe return to his hands, “because grandpa says if it is, he’ll take it over to town, and get it stuffed, and fixed up on a perch, to remember Oyster Day by; but I’ll bury it if you’d rather I would.” “It is a fully grown bird, Bobbie,” said Gray Lady, “and it is wearing its winter dress. In summer the head and neck that are now streaked with gray would be a dazzling white, and as accident killed it, and wind and tide gave it to you, there is no reason why you may not keep it with a clear conscience.” XVII THE BIRDS’ CHRISTMAS TREE _Preparation_ The Christmas sale was over. It had been held in the play and work rooms the Saturday before Christmas, and was a great success. The dressed dolls, iron-holders, aprons, bird-houses, wooden spoons, racks for clothes, and little knickknacks had been ranged on the work-table and carpenter’s bench, and all the people of the neighbouring towns, as well as from Fair Meadows village itself, had been asked to come and see. When they came and saw, they stayed to buy. The bird-houses proved the greatest novelty, and Tommy Todd and Dave, their cheeks red with excitement, were kept busy taking orders for more, to be finished by May or June, one customer said. She, however, was very much amused when Tommy told her that if she expected to have birds in the house (it was a box for Tree Swallows) the first season, she must have the house in place before April, so that it might “be weathered a little, and the birds find it when they first came, and not think it was a trap put up to catch them.”