390 BRITISH BIRDS. 



of thousands of birds coming and going, flying in the air and swimming 

 in the sea, and, above all, the wonderful variety and beauty of its eggs, 

 combine to make a visit to a breeding-place of the Guillemot unusually 

 interesting, not only to the ornithologist, but to every lover of nature. 



In winter the Guillemot is generally dispersed on the British coasts, 

 but keeps further out to sea than in summer, and is consequently less 

 frequently observed. From May to August during the breeding-season 

 its distribution is more restricted, [the low-lying coasts are abandoned, 

 and the birds by universal impulse crowd to bold rocky headlands, islets, 

 and sea-girt cliffs, for the purpose of rearing their young. It breeds in all 

 suitable localities like these, from the Isle of Wight in the south, up to 

 the north of Scotland, including all the Hebrides and Western Isles, 

 the Orkneys and the Shetlauds, and isolated St. Kilda. The Guillemot 

 durino- the short season when it visits the land is a bird of the rocks ; and 

 it may be regarded as a universal rule that where there are ocean cliffs on 

 the shores of our islands, the Guillemot will be found upon them. 



The Guillemot is a circumpolar bird, but varies somewhat in the shape 

 of its bill in different parts of its range, those breeding furthest north 

 having a short stout bill and passing under the name of Brunnich's 

 Guillemot. This form breeds in enormous numbers on Spitzbergen, 

 Nova Zembla, and Franz-Josef Land, ranging in the west to Grimsey 

 Island, north of Iceland, across Greenland north of lat. 64°, presumably at 

 least as far as Melville Island, and in the east to some unknown point on 

 the coast of Arctic Siberia, where a form with a longer bill (Pallas's 

 Guillemot) takes its place and joins the western limit of the range of 

 Brunnich's Guillemot somewhere on the American shores of the Arctic 

 Ocean. Pallas's Guillemot breeds in Kamtschatka and North Alaska, but 

 it is not known how far its range extends either to the east or west north 

 of Behring Straits. The Common Guillemot has a still longer bill and 

 is a more southern Atlantic form, breeding in the Bay of Fundy, Nova 

 Scotia, Labrador, Greenland south of lat. Gl", Iceland, the Faroes, Bear 

 Island (where, under the influence of the Gulf-stream, it reaches the high 

 latitude of 74°), and the north-west coasts of Europe as far south as North 

 France and as far east as the Varanger fjord, between Norway and Russia. 

 There is also a southern form in the Pacific Ocean, which is said sometimes 

 to have a bill still longer than the longest-billed examples of the Common 

 Guillemot. This form is called the Californian Guillemot, and breeds on 

 the American coast of the Pacific Ocean as far north as the Pribylov 

 Islands in Southern Alaska, and as far south as the Farallones off the 

 coast of San Francisco. All these races vary considerably inter se, and an 

 almost perfect series from the shortest and stoutest to the longest and 

 slenderest may be obtained. It is not known that they differ in tlie 

 slightest degree in their habits. 



