IN THE SHETLANDS 11s 
for many hours at a time—l never suspected its true 
origin. These particular birds never uttered any 
sound more extraordinary than a kind of “ik, ik, 
ik!” and this though they were constantly fighting, 
whilst the performance of the nuptial rite was 
frequent amongst them. The note which so as- 
tonished me never came from very near ; I heard it, 
as I have said before, only occasionally, and it always 
seemed to come from a part of the rock where a 
few pairs of fulmar petrels were sitting. When I 
mentioned it to the watcher, who occupied the little 
sentry-box on the ness, during the daytime, when I 
was out, leaving it for me to sleep in at night, he said 
nothing about guillemots, but expressed his opinion 
that the sound was produced by these fulmar petrels. 
Now the fulmar petrel, though I have never met with 
any reference to it, does utter, when on the breeding- 
ledges—or at least, it does in the Shetlands—a note 
which is sufficiently marked and striking, a sort of 
angry, hoarse, gruff interjection—guttural too—several 
times repeated, and sounding sometimes like a laugh. 
Often too, these notes are not divided, or else are so 
quickly repeated that they sound like one, con- 
tinuously uttered for some little space of time. As 
I now think, I must sometimes have caught this note 
at the beginning or end of the cry of the guillemot, 
and put it down as a part of it. Then, when, with 
this idea in my mind, I watched the petrels at but 
a few yards’ distance, and heard them uttering the 
note they do utter, to my heart’s content—swelling 
