Outer Fames. 41 



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 

 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 bur- 

 rows, 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 surroundings that one may pass within a foot 

 or two without noticing them. We saw on the Fame 

 Islands tern's eggs among the stones, and ringed 

 plovers' eggs on the sand, so exactly matching the 



E 



