IN fH SHETLANDS 97 
and stay there day after day—I know not for how 
long—without laying a second egg. If they do not 
do so, then none of these birds can have bred. But 
the ledges are alive with them, and they are of both 
sexes. How long does the mother bird remain with 
her chick upon the sea, and does she, during such 
period, remain with it there at night, thus abandoning 
the ledges for a time altogether, though she afterwards 
returns to them, or does she fly up each night to the 
ledges, whilst the chick roosts upon some rock at the 
cliff’s base, to be rejoined by its mother next morning ? 
I cannot answer these questions in a satisfactory 
manner. It seems as though time must be wanting 
for such a little family exodus as I am here suggest- 
ing, for on the 16th of July, upon the occasion of my 
first visit, I left these same ledges crowded with 
guillemots, all, or almost all, of whom were still 
feeding their young, and now, on the last day of the 
same month, I find all the old birds still upon them, 
but nearly all the young are gone. This gives about 
a fortnight for the birds I left to have gone off to sea 
with the young ones, and returned to the ledges alone, 
supposing the exodus to have commenced almost on 
the day I went away. Butdid it? As the few chicks 
that are still here are just about as big as the others 
were at the time I left them last year, I shall be 
better able to judge of this when I see how long they 
stay. 
Meanwhile, there is something to interest me 
under my eyes—a curious matter as it seems to 
H 
