168 MUTTON BIRDS 



Shag atop, and looked very remarkable against 

 the open sky and on the leafless bough. The eggs 

 are blue, which colour later changes to a dirty 

 brown; and in a clutch there are three to five 

 eggs. They seem to be closely incubated, and 

 whilst the chicks are still small, one or other of 

 the parents is always on the nest. Often, too, 

 whilst one is sitting on the eggs, or covering the 

 young, its mate will remain sociably perched on 

 the rim of the stick platform. Again, when the 

 chicks are somewhat older, the parents will stand 

 upright for long periods fronting one another. 

 A returning bird is greeted with an open, 

 brandished bill, a hiss, probably an exhortation 

 to be careful, and some appearance of feigned 

 anger, the wanderer in reply twisting and 

 snaking his neck and head. Shags of this breed 

 appear to possess for their little ones, rather the 

 practical affection of a just step-mother, than 

 a parent's tender love ; and the cries of the little 

 ones are, I imagine, mostly set down to be "just 

 nonsense," not to be encouraged. 



Standing upright on the nest with an absent 

 air and cold, grey, distrait eyes fixed on the dis- 

 tant sea and sky, the parent bird will for minutes 

 at a time endure unmoved the importunities of 

 her family. She is a study in detachment, 

 immovable, cold, statuesque, whilst immediately 

 beneath her one, or often the whole batch of 

 youngsters, sit up, yammering, their long necks 

 stretched to the utmost, and wriggling and 

 shivering in expectancy. The cadence of their 

 perfectly monotonous whine in its regular rise 

 and fall, is precisely like that part of an ass's 

 bray when the "Hee" and the "Haw" are 

 sounded on air inhaled. This intolerable call 



