WATCHING SHAGS AND GUILLEMOTS 189 



with the chick underneath him. The poor mother 

 yields each time to the storm, scuttles out of the way, 

 seems perplexed and startled, but keeps firm hold of 

 the fish. Driven away over and over again, she always 

 comes back, and at length, by dint of perseverance and 

 right feeling, weathers the storm, insinuates herself into 

 the place of the greedy bird and begins to feed the 

 chick. A new chord of feeling is now struck, and the 

 bird that has been so greedy and ill-tempered co- 

 operates in the most tender and interested manner 

 with the wife whom he has outraged. The ' scene ' of 

 a moment ago is forgotten, and there is now a widely 

 different and more accustomed one of family concord, 

 tenderness, and peace." 



I cannot think that such conduct as the above is 

 common, and even on this one occasion when I saw it, 

 it is possible (though it does not seem very likely) that 

 the ill-behaving bird did not try to get the fish for its 

 own sake, but only to feed the chick with. But how- 

 ever this may have been, fish are the constant cause of 

 disturbance amongst the birds generally, and the guil- 

 lemot that flies in with one has to avoid the snaps 

 made at it by all those near to where he alights, and 

 must sometimes run the gauntlet of most of the birds 

 on the ledge before he can get with it to his own 

 domicile. Sometimes he loses the fish, which is then 

 often lost again by the successful bird, and so passed 

 from one to another. 



Or it may be tugged at for a long time by two birds 

 that have a firm hold of the head and tail part re- 

 spectively, and pull it backwards and forwards, not 

 infrequently across the neck of a third bird standing 

 between them. Birds incubating or brooding over 



