94 Bird-Life in JAibrador. 



when thoroughly boiled, and found them very good and not 

 at all fishy. I will not attempt to describe the eggs of this 

 bird. AVheu once seen they can never be mistaken for the 

 eggs of any other species with which I am acquainted. The 

 ground color is white, and there are black scrawls all over its 

 surface chiefly concentrated into a blotched ring at the greater 

 end, with rarely any markings at all on the smaller end. 

 They are deposited anywhere in clefts of rocks, in open situa- 

 tions, and wherever the bird happens to be when desirous of 

 laying. The breeding habits of this bird are, like their other 

 habits, to me at least, so similar to those of the foolish guille- 

 mot, that I must leave the discriminating between them more 

 closely for others. 



COMMON PUFFIN PARRAKEET 



Fraivrcidd orciicn. — (L.) Stki'II. 



However similar in habits the razor-billed auk and fool- 

 ish guillemot may be, it is different with the puffin, another 

 of Labrador's characteristic birds, which has habits peculiar 

 to itself. We found the puffin occasional only as we ap- 

 proached the Labrador coast, and occasionally only until we 

 i-eached its vast breeding places, the Parrakeet and Greenley 

 Islands, just within the mouth of the Straits of Belle Isle. 

 Here they congregated in tens of thousands, nor was hardly 

 a single bird seen until we were within half a mile of the Is- 

 land, then they rose, of one accord, and, as if with a common 

 impulse, began circling around their abode and nesting-place. 

 If there were one hundred birds there were as many thou- 

 sand. They flew above, aboui, and around us ; they lined the 

 waters, they sat like sentinels uj^on the shore and rocks, like 

 flies on a plate of molasses, or hornets about a sugar-barrel. 

 They seemed utterly bewildered by our presence ; and so tame 

 that we could almost catch them or pick them up in our hand. 

 They had tunneled the ground with their holes in every direc- 

 tion, and hundreds peered cautiously from tbese burrows or 



