PUFFIN, OR SEA-PARROT 



20i 



birds have a smaller and smoother beak than their parents, and the 

 face dark grey ; while the long down of the nestling is sooty black 

 with a patch of white on the abdomen. 



Puffins breed from Spitzbergen, Lapland (where they are ex- 

 traordinarily numerous), and Iceland, along the whole of the British 

 coasts, in suitable localities, and thence to the north coast of France 

 and western Portugal ; while in winter they journey as far as the 

 Mediterranean in Europe and the New England coast on the opposite 

 side of the Atlantic. Puffin Island on the Anglesea side of Beaumaris 

 Bay, and a similarly named island on the Kerry coast, take their titles 



from these birds; while other well-known breeding-resorts in the 

 British Islands are the Scilly and Lundy Islands, the Isle of Wight, 

 parts of the Cornish coast, Flamborough Head, and a number of cliffs 

 on the coasts of Ireland. Lundy Island, it may be added, takes its 

 title from the Saxon name of these birds. To the British Islands 

 puffins are in great part merely summer-visitors, appearing in April 

 and departing in August, but on many parts of the east coast of 

 Scotland they are said to be resident. Turf-clad islands or the grassy 

 slopes of cliffs are their favourite breeding-resorts ; and on these they 

 stand in rows like toy-soldiers, and burrow deep into the soil for their 

 breeding-places, some of the nesting-birds constantly poking their 

 heads out of these burrows in an intensely comical manner, while 

 still more comical is the waddling gait of the species. In the fourth 



