96 THE BIRD WATCHER 
incubating, besides that the young guillemot is 
known to leave the l€dge whilst quite small, there is 
no room for doubt on this point. 
No; the young are gone. Why, then, do the 
parents stay? They will rear no second brood, so 
that it seems as though they love the ledges better 
than the little fluffy things that they were feeding 
upon them, up to the moment of their departure. 
Affection apparently must be bounded by the sea, for 
whilst the parents, if we suppose them to have accom- 
panied the chicks down, and swum about with them 
for a little, must have soon flown back, the chicks, 
owing to the undeveloped state of their wings, would 
have been unable to make the return journey. It 
would seem, therefore, that the first night after the 
down-flight must have separated mother and child for 
ever; but if this is the case we may well wonder how 
the rising generation of guillemots are able to support 
themselves. Up to now they have been fed upon the 
ledges, but henceforth they must dive and catch fish 
for themselves. That they should at once and of 
their own initiative acquire the skill to do this, or 
learn the art in so very short a time, from the parent 
birds, hardly seems possible. We must perforce 
suppose—or at least | must—that either the mother, 
as is most probable, or both the parents, remain with 
the chick for a little, feeding it now on the sea as they 
did before on the ledge, until in time—and no doubt 
very quickly—it learns to feed itself. But how strange, 
if this is so, that the grown birds return to the ledges 
