THE TUFTED PUFFIN. 903 
dull oil-green or delicate horn-color, and these in turn exactly match the irides 
in tint. The feet also become bright vermilion instead of a pale salmon. 
Thus gaily caparisoned, the Tufted Puffins, “Sea Parrots” now, repair 
to the grassy, sloping hillsides of the rocky islets which comprise the 
Olympiades, and renovate the old nesting burrows, or else dig new ones. 
They work intermittently at this. Stejneger, on the Commander Islands, 
noted that in the early days of the season the Puffins spent only one day 
ashore in alternation with two days at sea. It 1s probable, therefore, that 
the birds engage in the evolutions of courtship during these “sea-days,” 
for I have never seen anything but the most decorous behavior ashore. 
Tt is not = 
easily possi- 
ble to exag- 
gerate the 
grave solem- 
nity of these | 
quaint fowls. =. 
They are ab- 
solutely — si- 
lent on all 
occasions 
save when 
caught and 
harassed, 
when they 
may emit a 
low, raucous 
groan. They 
spend much 
time stand- Redrawn by Allan Brooks from Photo by the Authors. 
ing demurely “RETURNS AGAIN AND AGAIN TO SATISFY HIS CURIOSITY.” 
at thre en- 
trances of their burrows, and the nearest approach to levity one ever sees 
is the accidental shaking of the pendent plumes when the bird turns its 
head. 
If a hillside colony is approached suddenly from shore, the standing 
population, presumably males, pitches downward to sea by a common impulse ; 
while the nest occupants come shelling out by twos and threes and dozens as 
one traverses the honey-combed earth. Once a-wing, the Puffin returns again 
and again to satisfy his curiosity, employing for the purpose great horizontal 
circles or ellipses, and slowing up a little at perigee. Or, if the nesting island 
be a small one, the Puffins will circle it a score of times, forming rhythmically 
