IO HULL SCIENTIFIC AND FIELD NATURALISTS CLUB. 



taken, but from actual data, as well as report, I am able 

 to fix the interval in the case of the Guillemot at nineteen 

 to twenty days, and of the Razor Bill, seventeen days. 



The birds are so much alike, that in cases where a ledge 

 had been cleared of eggs and visited a few days afterwards, 

 when other birds had laid there, the observer might easily 

 persuade himself that the same birds had produced second 

 eggs. 



A considerable difference exists in the date at which 

 different birds lay, for on 15th June, 1901, climbing a ledge 

 which had been left alone, I found fresh and half-incubated 

 eggs side by side. The large end of the egg is extruded 

 first, the bird standing straight upright, with the feathers 

 ruffled, during the process. When sitting, the egg is tucked 

 between the feet by the bill, and is covered by the thigh 

 feathers. The bird' then either sits upright upon it, or in 

 the recumbent position usually attributed to sitting birds, 

 the position being lengthways along the egg. A sitting 

 bird can be distinguished by the way in which it resolutely 

 turns its face to the wall as though shunning the pleasures 

 of this world and devoting all its attention to maternal 

 duties! When the egg is well incubated or hatching, the 

 bird often refuses to leave it, preferring even capture by- 

 hand. 



Sports from the typical variety are sometimes seen on the 

 cliffs, a very dusky bird which lived for a season or two 

 enabling the climbers to ascertain that sometimes the male 

 assists in the duties of incubation, as in this case the normal 

 and dusk\ bird were seen to change places on the egg. 

 A bird with an entirely white head, except for two dark marks 

 above the eyes, has now been seen for four or five years. 

 Harvey Browne and Buckley, on the contrary, assert that 

 the female sits whilst the male feeds her, she becoming fat 

 and he lean in the process. The disengaged birds, whose 

 numbers are swelled occasionally by non-breeders, mean- 

 while sit facing the sea in rows, on the ledges, making 

 endless obeisances, dressed in white waistcoats like the 

 banqueters at an alderman's festival, and, for aught we 

 know, perhaps making long speeches about civic matters 

 to each other. 



No Guillemot will willingly leave the ledge where it was 

 born and brought up, hence the many scuffles for a place 

 upon the ancestral rock ; and unless actually driven off by 

 stronger birds, they always return to lay there. Certain 

 peculiarly marked eggs have been taken from the same 



