114 THE BIRD WATCHER 
of, which continues riggtg and falling—which is why 
I call it a jode/—for a longer or shorter time, the 
volume of sound being increased, sometimes, to 
a wonderful extent. It ends, usually, as it began, 
with a few short, rough notes which may be called 
a bark, as the other is called a bray, though to neither 
is there much resemblance if we make either a dog 
or a donkey the basis of comparison. Altogether it 
is one of the strangest, weirdest sounds that can be 
imagined, and nobody, not accustomed to such sur- 
prises, would suppose it could issue from the lungs of 
so small an animal as a guillemot. 
I made a strange error in regard to the utterer of 
this note when I first came to the Shetlands, and the 
history of it will show either what a fool I was (and 
am, in that case), or else how possible it is for such 
mistakes to arise, even with great care and close and 
continued observation—I should prefer it to show 
the latter. 1 thought it was impossible that I could 
have been mistaken, but now that I know I was I 
can see how it happened perfectly. At that time 
I knew nothing about the matter, for though 
I love natural history I hate the “British Bird” 
books, nor am I often in the way of being told any- 
thing, since, to be frank, I am as much a hermit as 
I am mercifully permitted to be: therefore, when I 
first heard the “bray” of the guillemot, as it is 
called, I was lost in wonder, and as it came but 
rarely, and never from any of the birds upon the one 
particular ledge that I watched day after day—often 
