28 THE AUKS 



the exodus takes place, they are not fully fledged, and have little 

 strength in their wings, not enough to permit them to fly off to the 

 sea. Their usual method, according to the best available evidence, 

 is to flutter and slide and fall down the side of the cliff" to the 

 waters below, an appalling journey for so inexperienced and puny a 

 creature. That they should hesitate is not surprising. Their parents, 

 however, are strong-minded enough to jostle them along. 1 Razorbills 

 have been seen jostling their young all the way down to the sea, from 

 foothold to foothold, so that the unhappy little birds went " rolling, 

 and tumbling and falling sometimes down steep cliffs." 2 Professor 

 C. J. Patten corroborates this : " The young are apparently roughly 

 treated, being jostled and pushed off their ledges ; yet their fall is so 

 broken as they tumble and scramble down the face of the cliff that 

 they generally reach the water in safety." 3 The evidence for the 

 statement that guillemots and razorbills will entice their young on to 

 their backs or seize them by the neck or wing and so carry them down 

 by force is contradictory, and rests largely on the observation of 

 fishermen, which is notoriously inexact. But it cannot be merely 

 disregarded. It may still be shown that the recalcitrant young are 

 treated in one or other of the above ways. 



Perhaps the most noteworthy feature in the exodus of the young 

 is that it occurs before they are fledged. If they were in possession 

 of wings, like, for instance, the young gannet, the descent would 

 present no dangers, and several lives would be saved. It is difficult 

 to see what the species gain by this early flight, for the young are as 

 much exposed to enemies, the larger gulls for instance, on the sea as 

 on the cliffs, indeed more so. A possible explanation takes us once 

 more back to the ancestral plover. If it resembled the present 

 ground-nesting plovers, it would certainly have been in the habit 

 of leading its young from their exposed birthplace long before they 



1 For the guillemot see C. J. Patten, Aquatic Birds, p.486; Naumann, Vbgel Mitteleuropas, xii. 

 222 ; Annals of Scottish Natural History, 1905, 146. For the razorbill the evidence is more 

 precise : C. J. Patten, Aquatic Birds, p. 470 ; Zoologist, 1871, 2427, quoted in Yarrell, iv. 55 ; Irish 

 Naturalist, 1899, 132. 



2 Irish Naturalist, 1899, 132 (E. M'Carron). ' Loc. cit. 



