98 THE BIRD WATCHER 
me, which requires some sort of explanation. As I 
have said, but very OF of these guillemots have still 
a chick to look after, but those that have not, often 
seem to be under the hallucination that they are 
blessed in this way. But a little while ago, for 
instance, a bird—one of such a childless pair—flew 
in with a fish, and running with it to its partner, 
both of them stood together drooping their wings, 
and, at the same time, projecting them forwards, so as 
to make that little tent, within which the young one 
is so characteristically fed. Always either one or 
both of them had the wings thus drooped, as though 
to shield and protect something, though “‘nothing was 
but what was not.” Standing in this way, they passed 
the fish several times to and from each other, and, 
alternately bending their heads down till its tail 
hung a little above the ground, appeared to wait 
for an imaginary chick to take it from them. Now 
had the fish, which was a sand-eel, been held by the 
head in the tip of the bill, very little stooping would 
have been necessary for this purpose, and therefore 
I might the more easily have imagined what | here 
describe. But instead of this it lay longitudinally 
within the beak, so that only about an inch of the 
tail projected beyond it, as is very commonly the 
case. Therefore, when the birds bent down as a 
preliminary to moving the fish forward along the 
bill—which, however, they can do as well in one 
position as another—-it was in a quite unmistakable 
manner that they did so, and, looking almost directly 
