14 HULL SCIENTIFIC AND FIELD NATURALISTS' CLUB. 



altogether. It is also slightly smaller in average size. 

 Occasionally the two birds lay eggs with a white ground- 

 colour almost exactly alike.* 



The Guillemot sits about thirty days, and from about 

 the middle or third week in July onwards the young are 

 hatched. Their continuous shrill chirpings then mingle with 

 the hoarse growls of the old birds, who fly further and 

 further afield in search of food, reaching even as far as the 

 Lincolnshire coast. In this respect the Guillemot is handi- 

 capped. Owing to the shape of his beak he can only carry 

 one fish at a time, with its head down his throat, whereas 

 the Razor-Bill and Puffin, with their broader bills, carry 

 sometimes as many as a dozen at a time, the bodies of the 

 fishes hanging down on each side of the bill, the heads being 

 in the bird's mouth. The extra numbers of trips which the 

 Guillemots make to the cliffs will partly account for their 

 being so much more in evidence there. Very little food is 

 wasted, such a thing as a fish being seldom seen on the 

 ledges. The commonest food seems to be sand-eels. 



About the third week in July the young begin to take to 

 the water, but how they get down alive from that giddy 

 height is not clearly known. Several alternative methods 

 are believed in and loudly proclaimed by their respective 

 apostles. Some say the old bird carries the young in her 

 beak, some, on her back, some, between her legs. .Mr. 

 Heathcote saw an old Guillemot, in St. Kilda, push the 

 young one off a low ledge and follow herself, both flopping 

 into the water together. Gatke, from fifty years of observa- 

 tion, says the old ones leave the ledges, calling the young, 

 and that the latter, in their eagerness to reach their parents, 

 overbalance themselves, and fall off the ledges into the 

 water ; but the cliffs of Heligoland are low, and the same 

 method on our high cliffs would mean destruction to young 

 birds unable to fly. Ed. Hodgson says that he has seen 

 young Guillemots and Razor-Bills called off the ledges by 

 their parents, always at high tide, when, with rigid wings, 

 and feet spread out on each side of the tail, they slant away 

 to the water. When climbing ledges with young of a fair 

 size upon them, I have observed them occasionally launch 

 boldly out, 7 flapping their tiny wings, and, by spreading 



* A Razor-Bill's egg with white ground-colour may be distinguished 

 from a Guillemot's of the same type by holding it to the light and 

 looking through the hole bv which it was blown, when the inside of the 

 shell of the Razor-Bill will be seen to be light green, whilst that of the 

 •Guillemot is white. 



t Usually they viciously attack the intruder. 



