^42 SWIMMERS. 



Spitzbergen, Greenland, Iceland, and the north of Europe, as 

 well as the Arctic coast of Asia and Kamtschatka. It likewise 

 breeds in some of the Scottish islands, and is generally found 

 about saline lakes and the interior seas and gulfs, but is less 

 frequent on the borders of the ocean. In autumn these birds 

 spread themselves over the banks of rivers and lakes. They 

 feed upon fish, fry, and insects, and nest upon the rocks near the 

 sea-coast, laying three eggs of an olivaceous white, marked with 

 a great number of small dark spots and other grayish ones less 

 distinct. In Iceland they inhabit the cliffs of the coast in vast 

 numbers, and utter loud and discordant cries, particularly on 

 the approach of rapacious birds, as the Sea Eagle, which prob- 

 ably prey upon their young. Both their flesh and eggs are 

 esteemed as good food. 



The Kittiwake is more strictly a bird of the ocean than Nuttall's 

 remarks imply. In the Far North — in Greenland and along the 

 shores of the Arctic Ocean — t,he nesting site of a colony is usually 

 at the head or inland end of a fjord or bay; but in milder latitudes 

 the chosen site is a craggy cliff against which the angered waves 

 dash with unbroken force. Small colonies are found along our 

 coast as far south as the mouth of the Bay of Fundy; but farther 

 north the number of birds nesting in a community is very large. 

 At one famous range of cliffs in Norway the number of breeding 

 birds has been estimated by a careful naturalist at half a million. 

 In the winter these birds visit the New England shores and extend 

 their range as far south as Virginia, and at that season a few exam- 

 ples visit the Great Lakes. 



Our bird differs but little in its habits from other oceanic Gulls. 

 Feeding chiefly on fish, but accepting any diet that drifts within 

 range of its keen sight ; drinking salt water in preference to fresh ; 

 breasting a gale with ease and grace — soaring in mid-air, skim- 

 ming close above the crested waves, or swooping into the trough 

 for a coveted morsel ; resting upon the rolling billows and sleeping 

 serenely as they roll, with head tucked snugly under a wing ; wan- 

 dering in loose flocks and making comrades of other wanderers ; 

 devoted to mate and young and attached to all its kin, — wherever 

 seen or however employed, the Kittiwake is revealed as a typical 

 gleaner of the sea. 



The name is derived from the bird's singular cry, which resem- 

 bles the syllables kitti-aa kitti-aa. 



