Birds' -Nesting Season. 5 3 



had been larger we might have seen a warning of 

 what was before us in the curiously angular shape 

 of the sun as it dipped ; but ignorance was bliss, and 

 we " turned in," happy in what we thought the certain 

 prospect of a quick and pleasant voyage, and woke 

 to find ourselves anchored for five-and-twenty hours 

 in a dripping fog, somewhere near, but no one could 

 say how far from, Kirkwall Bay. 



The interest of our trip lay more in the present 

 than the past ; our object in coming so far having 

 been not so much to look for antiquities as to see 

 the birds, which in the summer gather by myriads 

 to breed on the rocks and islands of the Shetlands. 

 Some which are common here, nest in few, if any, 

 other places in the British Isles. When we started 

 we had indulged in dreams of visits to Fair Island, 

 and perhaps to Foula, which lie, the one reported 

 to be more beautiful than any island in either Orkney 

 or Shetland half-way between the two groups ; the 

 other the wildest and most precipitous in either 

 in the open Atlantic, some twenty miles or so to the 

 west of the mainland of Shetland. 



But twelve days, or at most a fortnight, was all that 

 we could conveniently spare, and of these three had 

 already gone before we set foot on shore in Lerwick 

 on Sunday evening. 



It is only in very calm days that a landing can be 

 effected on either Fair Island or Foula, and as the 

 weather, which for the fortnight before our arrival 

 had been unusually warm and still for the time of 

 year, had broken, and the " Beltane Ree," of which 

 before leaving home we had read with some mis- 

 givings in Dr. Edmundston's " Glossary of Shetland 

 Words," as " a track of stormy weather common in 

 the Islands about Whitsuntide," was to all appearance 



