PREFACE 
N the spring of 1900 I paid my first visit to the 
Shetlands, and most of what I then saw is em- 
bodied in my work Bird Watching. Two years 
afterwards I went there again, arriving somewhat 
later, and it is the notes made by me during this 
second stay which fill the greater number of these 
pages. They are my journal, written from day to 
day, amidst the birds with whom I lived without 
another companion, nor did I look upon them as 
more than the rough material out of which I might, 
some day, make a book. When it came to making 
one, however, it struck me more and more forcibly 
that I was taking elaborate pains to stereotype and 
artificialise what was, at any rate, as it stood, an 
unforced utterance and natural growth. I found, in 
fact, that I could make it worse, but not better, so 
I resolved not to make it worse. Except for a few 
peckings, therefore, and minor interpolations—mostly 
having to do with the working out of ideas jotted 
down in the rough—TI send it to press with this very 
negative sort of recommendation, and with only the 
hope added that what interested me so much will 
interest others also, even through the veil of my 
