168 THE BIRD WATCHER 
spirit of youth and hness in it; always thought 
that the wind is perpetual and multiplied by about a 
hundred. I am told this summer is unprecedented, 
even in the Shetlands, but bad weather precedents are 
seldom remembered by the seasoned inhabitants of a 
place. I, as a visitor, can remember the June and 
July of two years ago, and “if it was not Bran, it was 
Bran’s brother,” as the Highlanders say. 
I forgot to mention that whilst watching the guille- 
mots on the ledges, one of them flew down into the 
sea, just below, which was like a great, clear basin, 
and thus gave me the first opportunity I have yet had 
of seeing a guillemot under water. It progressed, 
like the razorbill and puffin, by repeated strokes of 
its wings, which were not, however, outspread as 
in flight, but held as they are when closed, parallel, 
that is to say, roughly speaking, with the sides, from 
which they were moved outwards, and then back, with 
a flap-like motion, as though attached to them all 
along. Thus the flight through the water is managed 
in a very different way from the flight through 
the air. 
The descent to these guillemot ledges—for they 
represent the first only, and lowest, of the up-piled 
strata of which the entire precipice is formed—seems 
to me, who am no particular cragsman, to get worse 
every day. There are parts of it which I very much 
dislike—a green edge, and not much of it, above 
a well-nigh precipitous slope of the same lush grass, 
starred, here and there, with points of rock, and 
