IN THE SHETLANDS 124 
self as though her throat werea platter. It was much 
the same as with the fulmar petrels. Numbers of 
the young have left their nests, and keep all together, 
standing on the rocks or floating on the sea. Others 
remain, and I notice that these keep flapping their 
wings. This must strengthen them, and have the 
effect of preparing Dedalus for his first flight—for 
it seems probable that these particular ones have not 
made it. But they have, though, and bang goes a 
provisional hypothesis! Every moment, to laugh at 
me, one or other of them is flying out from the 
ledges, whilst others are returning to them. 
When one of these young kittiwakes opens its bill, 
it is at once apparent that the inside of its mouth is 
much less brilliantly coloured than it is in the parent 
bird, being of a pale pinkish, merely, with, perhaps, a 
tinge of light yellow. As for the grown bird’s mouth, 
one can hardly exaggerate the lurid brightness of it. 
The whole buccal cavity, including, as I think is usual, 
the tongue, is of a fine rich red, or orange-red colour, 
carrying on that of the naked skin adjoining the 
mandibles outside, with which, indeed, it is continuous. 
It is just the same in the case of the old and young 
shag. The mouth of the former presents a uniform 
surface of splendid gamboge, whilst that of the latter 
is almost the natural pink, only just beginning to 
pass into yellow. In the young guillemot, also, the 
interior of the mouth is pinkish merely, whilst in the 
grown bird it is of a pleasing lemon or gamboge. 
With the fulmar petrel again, we have much the same 
