144 THE SHETLANDS IN THE 



the paler, as a rule, becomes the ground colour and the 

 less clear the markings. 



It is a fairly safe assumption that an egg unusually 

 strongly marked or highly coloured is one of the first 

 of the season which the bird has laid, and it is not an 

 uncommon thing, at least with Gulls, to see the pitch 

 of colour in a nest containing one or more of such 

 swart eggs brought down to the average by an un- 

 usually pale egg or two in the same nest. 



The Scoutie Ailen, as the Richardson's Skua is called 

 in Shetland, carries the ordinary arts of deception to 

 as great perfection as any bird. It can limp like a 

 Partridge, and drop as if shot from the sky, and lie on 

 its side feebly flapping one wing. But if the stories 

 told by the shepherds are true, and certainly our own 

 experiences strongly confirmed them, the bird is not 

 content with such tame devices as these. 



In Flaubert's wonderful book Salammbo, when 

 Hamilcar learns that, as a last hope for the city, a 

 sacrifice of first-born to Moloch has been decreed, he 

 hides the little Hannibal in dirty clothes in the slaves' 

 quarters, and struggles with the priests, who tear from 

 his arms a jewelled and scented slave-boy. 



The Scoutie, with the true spirit of the noble 

 Carthaginian slave-owner, when hard pressed, deliber- 

 ately leads on to the nest of the Gulls it despises, and 

 then goes through an elaborate pantomime of distress. 

 Again and again we made sure that at last we were to 

 see the true Skua's eggs, and as often found ourselves 

 looking at the nest of some common Gull. 



