302 THE BIRD WATCHER 
cuillemot, at least in @@is latter respect, but I have 
seen much less of it than the other. Unless, how- 
ever, it be supposed more difficult to catch and hold 
many fish than many insects, there is no reason why 
the puffin should be singled out for wonder in this 
respect. The water wagtail, when feeding its young, 
fills its bill with insects, which it catches, not only on 
the ground, but flying also—a great feat, surely— 
and the lesser spotted woodpecker brings a similar 
assortment to the nesting-tree. I believe myself that 
most insect-eating birds do the same whilst feeding 
their family, unless when they catch an insect suffi- 
ciently large to be a host in itself. 
What a whirr of pinions, and fine wild chase 
beneath the beetling precipice, and out to sea! It was 
the Arctic skua, pursuing, this time, a black guillemot, 
no doubt ew route for its young. They went so fast— 
the skua with the swoop of a peregrine falcon—that 
I could only just follow the smaller bird, but I caught 
its white wing-patches, so am sure it was not a puffin. 
Half-way out of the cove the guillemot must have 
dropped its fish, for its pursuer descended, and hung 
hovering over the water, seemingly embarrassed, and 
without alighting upon it. This, at first sight, seems 
evidence in favour of the theory that the skua, unless 
it succeeds in catching the spoil before it touches the 
sea, will have nothing to do with it ; but as a herring- 
gull now flew up, and behaved in the same way, the 
more legitimate inference is that both birds were 
looking for what neither of them could see, and that 
