IN THE SHETLANDS ery. 
little figure running before me, which, at first, looked 
like nothing, but soon became a little great skua 
(‘‘ my little good Lord Cardinal”’). I pressed after, and 
when it found me overtaking it, it stopped and bit 
at me, but not as hard as another had done, nor was 
it so rude when I took it up. This little thing was 
still covered with a whitey-yellowish fluff, under 
which the brown feathers were well appearing. 
When I put it down it ran away lustily, yet in a slow 
and heavy fashion, as though a great skua through 
all. All the while, the two parent birds kept circling 
round with distressed cries of “ak, ak |!” and swooping 
at me often. This they continued to do till I went 
right away, even whilst I lay on the ground at some 
distance, in hopes to see something between them and 
the chick. They never touched me, however, so 
that it is evident that the fierceness of these birds 
very much diminishes as the chicks get older. This 
one must have been out some time, I think, though 
still in the fluff—or partly in it—so that I cannot say 
exactly when the diminution commences; but the 
younger the chick, I think, the fiercer the attack. 
Valour, probably, has the same ebb and flow with the 
smaller skua, but I cannot be sure of this, since I did 
not see the chicks of the birds that attacked me lately. 
What I am sure of, however, is that they attacked me 
with unimpaired vigour and no loss of nerve, so that, 
had I set my cap for them to knock off, why, they 
would have knocked it off, and some one with a camera 
might have made a photograph of it. 
