242 THE BIRD WATCHER 
This little incidentygives a hint as to some of the 
mischances which may befall puffins here. With such 
a jumble of heaped rocks and boulders there are great 
facilities for slipping or getting between them in such 
a way as might make it difficult to get out again, and 
an alarmed bird, caught as this one was, would, of 
course, pull and pull, wedging itself all the tighter. If 
found in this situation by a gull—or perhaps, skua— 
its fate would be sealed, and its picked and disem- 
bowelled carcase would then be left upon the rocks, as 
I have so often found it. Such a misfortune, indeed, 
cannot be supposed to be of common occurrence ; but 
the hundreds of thousands of puffins must be con- 
sidered. 
I have said that puffins are amorous. They are 
bellicose also—the two, indeed, are interwoven to- 
gether—and have a tendency—but this, perhaps, is 
included in the main proposition—to fight in mé/ées. 
When two are about it a third and then a fourth joins, 
and so on, and several will stand menacing one another 
with their sharp, razor-like mandibles held threaten- 
ingly open, and often moving like scissor-blades. 
Then, all at once, one springs on another, seizes him 
by the scruff of the neck, and—so it has often appeared 
to me—endeavours to throw him over whatever edge 
they both happen to be near—for they are generally 
near the edge of something. It is curious—or at 
least it takes one by surprise—that when the beak is 
thus opened it looks quite different to what it did 
before. Being divided, its breadth, which is such a 
