THE BIRDS OP THE OUTER FARNES 125 



a foot or two of us. The rocky foundation of both 

 Wawmses is covered in parts with a dry light peat, 

 which is honeycombed in every direction with burrows, 

 most of them containing one very dirty white egg, 

 protected in many cases by the parent bird, which, 

 when we put our hands in, fought with foot and bill, 

 biting sometimes hard enough to break the skin and 

 draw blood. We drew one or two birds out of their holes. 

 They fought to the last, and when we let them go, 

 more than one waddled back to her treasure, with an 

 indignant shake and look which said very plainly, 

 ' I 've taught that fellow a lesson he won't forget in a 

 hurry.' 



There is something irresistibly comic in a> Puffin on 

 his native soil. With his little round body poised 

 straight on end on turned-out toes, and impossibly 

 coloured beak, which does not seem really to belong to 

 the face at all, and his grave earnest expression, the 

 bird looks like nothing so much as a child with a false 

 nose on, dressed in his father's coat, playing at being 

 grown up. They are on another ground very interest- 

 ing birds. With comparatively few exceptions, when 

 birds build in holes, where colouring is unnecessary 

 for purposes of concealment Kingfishers, Wood- 

 peckers, and Petrels, for instance they lay white eggs. 

 When they lay on the ground in the open the eggs are 

 coloured, often in such close imitation of their sur- 

 roundings that one may pass within a foot or two 

 without noticing them. We saw on the Fame Islands 

 Terns' eggs among the stones, and Ringed Plovers' eggs 



