THE BIRD WATCHER 
IN THE SHETLANDS 
WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS 
—AND DIGRESSIONS 
CHAPTER’ I 
MY ISLAND AGAIN! 
Y island again !—and all the birds still there, 
looking just as they did when I left it. More, 
too, have come. At night, but in a sort of murky 
daylight, I walk over the breeding-ground of the 
terns, a long flat strip of pebbly beach—or rather 
the heather a little way above it, for on the beach 
itself they do not appear to have laid. Rising, all at 
once, as is their wont, they make a second smaller 
canopy, above me, floating midway beneath the all- 
overshadowing one of dreary low-lying cloud. Out 
of it, ever and anon, some single bird shoots down, 
with a cry so sharp and shrill that it seems to pierce 
the ear like a pointed instrument. Occasionally an 
oyster-catcher darts in amongst them all, on quickly 
quivering wings, its quavering high-pitched note of 
- “teep, teep !|—teep, teep, teep |” threading, as it were, 
the general clamour, whilst like a grey, complaining 
shadow, the curlew circles, beyond and _ solitary, 
B 
