He flies inland over the Bluff, crossing in two minutes a cliff that an active man cannot scale in under an hour and heads for Deepdene Farm to see if there are any pickings to be had from the Willoughbys. Then he flies low over High Coombe, veering north-west along the edge of the wind, croaking his way over Shallowford Woods and the mere, and on across the orchard of the big house to Priory Wood and the outbuildings of Hermitage, where he sometimes swoops to steal pig food from the troughs of Arthur Pitts and his son, Henry. Henry usually sees gulls and takes pot shots at them with his rifle, so this heads them into the wind, or almost so, for they fly on south-west by west across the Sorrel to Four Winds and if there is nothing to be had there on again over the moor to the Teazel, and so out of the Shallowford domain altogether. The herring-gulls are greedy, cunning, inquisitive birds, with little sense of family but they are matchless aeronauts, cresting the strongest gusts and sometimes making pinpoint landings on chimneys and stable roofs to see and hear what is going on in the estate.
