124 THE BIRDS OF THE OUTER FARNES 



habitual wariness. He is seldom far from the Duck, 

 but, excepting as she leaves her nest, when he is pretty 

 sure to join her, manages to keep well out of sight. 

 They are very common on the islands. We saw a 

 great many nests, several thickly padded with down, 

 but perhaps because the Black-backed Gulls are bad 

 neighbours, as sucked egg-shells here and there too 

 plainly showed none had larger clutches than four or 

 five. One forgiving Duck was sitting on two eggs, one 

 of which was a Gull's. 



The Eider Duck, when frightened, usually, as she rises, 

 spatters her eggs with a yellow oil, which has a strong, 

 sickly, musky smell. The young birds are taken by 

 their mothers to the sea almost immediately they 

 are hatched ; but we were lucky enough, later in the 

 day, on another island, to find, under a piece of stranded 

 wreck, four tiny brown-black Ducklings. They were 

 not many minutes out of the shell, and looked, in their 

 soft bed of down, which exactly matched their own 

 colour, the perfection of baby comfort. One of the 

 watchers had noticed eggs in the nest an hour before 

 we found the little birds. 



From the Brownsman we crossed to the South 

 Wawmses, which, with its sister island, the North 

 Wawmses, from which it is separated by a narrow 

 channel, is the headquarters of the Puffins. We landed 

 in a shingly creek, and as we climbed the rocks, which 

 are here rather a bank than a cliff, we were met by 

 a string of startled Puffins, which came with quick 

 arrowy flight straight at us, passing out to sea within 



