Birds' -Nesting Season. 57 



In the remoter islands something of the old spirit 

 of the Norseman, who believed that the only safe 

 road to Valhalla was across a bloody battlefield, still 

 survives in the idea that the most honourable death- 

 bed for a Shetlander is " on the Banks ; " but on the 

 more comfortable mainland, so far as we could learn, 

 there is very little cliff-climbing done now by any but 

 adventurous boys ; and, excepting when, as hundreds 

 are misguided enough to do, the birds tempt fate by 

 laying on the flat, they may most of them reckon 

 on bringing up their families without human in- 

 terference. 



As we stood by the Holm, continuous flocks of 

 small Gulls, either Kittiwakes or Sea-mews the two 

 are in appearance so much alike, that unless very 

 close indeed it is impossible to say which is which 

 flew over us, all in the same direction, coming from 

 the north-west. Every bird, in all many hundreds, 

 had a bunch of something in its mouth. We tried to 

 find out what the attractive morsels were, but all our 

 efforts to make one of them drop his load were 

 useless, and we could only guess from the general 

 appearance and size (very likely wrongly) that they 

 were parcels of sand eels or sand worms. 



From the Holm we strolled over to the lower ground, 

 where in the morning we had noticed more than one 

 anxious pair of Richardson's Skuas, and were absorbed 

 for the rest of the afternoon in watching them. The 

 Skuas, of which there are four kinds classed as British, 

 are the connecting link between the Gulls and Hawks. 

 The Richardson or Arctic Skua is the commonest. 

 It is a slender bird with a body scarcely bigger than a 

 Pigeon, but with a powerful cutting beak, and great 

 powers of flight and courage. They live, like all their 

 tribes, almost entirely by robbing larger Gulls, and 



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