240 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. 



of a quantity of flotsam and jetsam thrown up 

 by an exceptionally high tide could be called. 

 I said admiringly to myself, " Here's a bold bird/' 

 and, promptly fixing up my apparatus, focussed 

 her newly hatched chick and egg, attached the 

 longest piece of pneumatic tubing I possessed to my 

 shutter, and waited in hiding under an old sand- 

 coloured mackintosh. The courageous mother-bird 

 was back again directly, and the full-page illustra- 

 tion on the previous page was quickly obtained. 



On the Megstone Rock, close by the Fame 

 Islands, a fine colony of cormorants breeds year 

 by year, in spite of the discouraging fact that a 

 high spring tide sometimes washes ever}^ nest 

 and egg away, and leaves the birds under the 

 painful necessity of starting their housekeeping 

 all ovei again. During m}^ last sta\^ in the 

 ruins of St. Cuthbert's Tower I had a cormorant, 

 which appeared to be a kind of social outcast 

 from the above-mentioned colony, undei almost 

 daily observation. 



Whether this solitary bird was a bachelor 

 unable to find a wife, or a spinster unable to 

 meet with a husband, I cannot say, but it appar- 

 ently had no aspirations in life beyond those of 

 catching fish and standing quite still in one place 

 for lengthy periods, giving its organs of digestion 

 an unimpeded opportunity of dealing with their 

 remains. Its meal hour appeared to have some 



