In my rough old travel-stained clothes and tweed hat I might have passed for a Branscombe villager, but I did no hoeing and digging in one of the cultivated patches; and when I deliberately sat down on a rock to watch them, they noticed it and became suspicious; and as time went on and I still remained immovable, with my eyes fixed on them, the suspicion and anxiety increased and turned to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up and came close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others and join in the loud chorus of alarm.

It was a wonderful sound.

Not like the tempest of noise that may be heard at the breeding-season at Lundy Island, and at many other stations where birds of several species mix their various voices--the yammeris and the yowlis, and skrykking, screeking, skrymming scowlis, and meickle moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar's wonderful onomatopoetic lines.

Here there was only one species, with a clear resonant cry, and as every bird uttered that one cry, and no other, a totally different effect was produced.

The herring-gull and lesser black-backed gull resemble each other in language as they do in general appearance; both have very powerful and clear voices unlike the guttural black-headed and common gull.