174 BIRD WATCHING 



the female bird rises a little on the nest, and each 

 time there is a gleam like snow and the gloom seems 

 deeper against the cut outline of a pure white egg. 

 How full of poetry and interest it is lying there ; how 

 unmeaning and, one may almost say, absurd in a 

 cabinet ! " 



The nest of the shag is continually added to by the 

 male, not only whilst the eggs are in process of incuba- 

 tion, but after they are hatched, and when the young 

 are being brought up. In a sense, therefore, it may 

 be said to be never finished, though to all practical 

 purposes it is, before the female bird begins to sit. 

 That up to this period the female as well as the male 

 bird takes part in the building of the nest I cannot but 

 think, but from the time of my arrival on the island I 

 never saw the two either diving for or carrying seaweed 

 together. Of course, if all the hen birds were sitting 

 this is accounted for, but from the courting antics which 

 I witnessed, and for some other reasons, I judged that 

 this was not the case. Once I saw a pair of birds 

 together high up on the cliffs, where some tufts of grass 

 grew in the niches. One of these birds, only, pulled 

 out some of the grass, and flew away with it accom- 

 panied by the other one. It is not only seaweed that 

 is used by these birds in the construction of the nest. 

 In many that I saw, grass alone was visible (though I 

 have no doubt seaweed was underneath it) ; and one, 

 in particular, had quite an ornamental appearance, 

 from being covered all over with some land-plant 

 having a number of small blue flowers ; and this I 

 have observed in other nests, though not to the same 

 extent. A fact like this is interesting when we re- 

 member the bower-birds, and the way in which they 



