IN THE SHETLANDS 197 
He lets me stroke him, and though, when I approach 
my finger to his face, he opens his beak, yet he cannot 
be said to show much fierceness. The father and 
mother sail overhead, and once the chick reaches up 
with its neck stretched straight into the air, and open- 
ing its mandibles widely and excitedly, utters a thin 
little sound. This is to the parents, I feel sure—a cry 
of distress—and has no reference to me, unless it be to 
call a rescue. It seems like this, certainly, yet neither 
of them make, for some time, even a pretence of 
swooping at me. Now, however, they begin, but 
always swerve off when some yards away. Mean- 
while the chick has run off; but when I follow him 
I find him just as he was before, crouched against 
a little bank of heather, with his head pressed some- 
what into it. It is curious how he now, a second 
time, lets me stroke him, without in the least 
moving. 
This instinct of crouching and lying still when young 
is one which both the skuas here share with terns, 
gulls, peewits, etc. All of them lie in a very marked 
attitude, with the head and neck stretched straight 
out along the ground; yet all of them, as soon as they 
learn to fly, quite give up this habit. The stone- 
curlew, however, which, when young, has a precisely 
similar one, is supposed to keep it through life, but 
though this may be the case, 1 am convinced, from 
my own observation, that the grown bird acts in this 
manner far less frequently. To run with great swift- 
ness, and then, if they think it worth while, to fly, is 
