112 THE BIRD WATCHER 
in the old place, perhagw, if the truth were known— 
in long, gleaming rows and little salient clusters, 
equally conspicuous by their compact shape and 
vividly contrasted colouring ; whilst both above and 
below them, on nests which look like some natural, 
tufted growth of the sheer, jagged rock, and which 
touch, or almost touch, one another, sit hundreds 
and hundreds of kittiwakes, the soft bluey-grey and 
downier white of whose plumage, with their more 
yielding and accommodating outlines, make them as 
a tone and tinting of the rock itself, and delight with 
grace, as the others do with boldness. Seen from a 
distance all except the white is lost, and then they 
have the effect of snow, covering large surfaces of 
the hard, perpendicular rock. Nearer, they look 
like little nodules or bosses of snow projecting from 
a flatter and less pure expanse of it. An innumer- 
able cry goes up, a vociferous, shrieking chorus, 
the sharp and ear-piercing treble to the deep, som- 
brous bass of the waves. The actual note is supposed 
to be imitated in the name of the bird, but to my 
own ear it much more resembles—to a degree, in- 
deed, approaching exactitude—the words “It’s getting 
late!” uttered with a great emphasis on the “late,” 
and repeated over and over again in a shrill, harsh, 
and discordant shriek. The effect—though this is far 
from being really the case—is as though the whole of 
the birds were shrieking out this remark at the same 
time. There is a constant clang and scream, an 
eternal harsh music—harmony in discord—through 
