The New Arrivals.

The speckled and downy-feathered herring gull chicks are beginning to appear amongst the roof tiles, chimney pots and flashing of the neighbourhood tenements, under the watchful eyes of the parents as they clamber over the stone and slate of our artificial cliffs.

Before too long, however, their wheezing, peeping voices will begin to punctuate the early morning twilight clamouring for food, and to echo from nearly every street by the docks like a thousand broken miniature concertinas.