120 BIRD WATCHING 



of a young chicken, being fluffy and of a yellowish grey 

 colour, speckled with black. At 12.40 the second 

 young one appears, pushing itself out from under the 

 mother bird as she rises a little in the nest. At half- 

 past one the male gull, which has been near all the 

 while, walks slowly and importantly to the nest, which 

 he passes and then, turning back towards it, disgorges 

 on to the rock a small fish, which he takes up in just 

 the tip of his bill and pushes towards both the chick 

 on the rock and the mother on the nest, all slowly and 

 with a dry sort of manner, as though the bird were a 

 cynic. The mother gull leans forward from the nest 

 and takes it, and, first, holds it on the ground, while the 

 chick outside pecks at it. Then she swallows it herself. 

 The male now produces in the same way a small some- 

 thing — I suppose a gobbet of fish — and draws the 

 chick's attention to it by touching it with his bill and 

 pushing it a little towards him. The chick then 

 swallows it, upon which the male flies off and takes 

 his accustomed stand on a large projecting point of 

 rock close at hand." This is a conjugal, a domestic, 

 picture. The other, which I shall now give, and in 

 which the hero was an Arctic skua, was, perhaps, 

 " more condoling." 



" The one bird stands still and upright, whilst the 

 other, holding the neck constrainedly down, but with 

 the head raised as far as is compatible with this, keeps 

 moving round and round it. After revolving thus 

 several times, keeping, always, very close to and, 

 sometimes, actually touching the standing bird, this 

 one also stands still, always in the same attitude, and 

 opens his beak. The other one, standing as before, 

 now raises the head and opens the beak also, upon 



