240 THE BIRD WATCHER 
watch little familiar yyoodland birds by the wild sea 
shore and amidst a Apel scenery like this. 
Puffins, at the right time, are, no doubt, very 
amorous, as even now, when they should be a little 
passé in such matters, I have seen them so. In this 
state they will sometimes indulge in quite a little 
frenzy first of kissing and then of cossetting—nibbling, 
' that is to say, each other’s feathers about the head and 
face. Indeed, such pretty little lover-like actions— 
mostly on the part of one bird of the two, I presume 
the female—were never seen. 
But they are not only loving, these little birds. 
They are playful too, and, as I think, sympathetic. 
Thus when one, standing on the rock, gives its wings 
a little fluttering shake, another by the side of it—its 
mate, probably, but perhaps only its friend — will 
sometimes catch one of them in its adorned beak and 
playfully detain it. This is done with wonderful 
softness—obviously in good part, and so it is re- 
ceived. Is it not fun, then, playfulness? Perhaps it 
is not. It may be but a part of the passion-play, and 
we should not step too lightly in our judgment from 
primaries to secondaries. On my last visit here, for 
instance, whilst climbing painfully along this black 
beach—a horror of heaped stones and fragments, 
making, often, unscalable, albeit only miniature, pre- 
cipices—I happened to see—looking down from a 
huge tilted rock that guarded one entrance to a little 
dark valley of confusion—I happened to see there a 
poor little puffin that had got its head caught in some 
