THE KITTIWAKE 193 



Like other seabirds, kittiwakes go long distances for the food 

 which they give to their young. It consists chiefly of small fish and 

 crustaceans, which form also the main diet of the parents. The 

 birds recorded by Collett and Nansen in the North Polar regions 

 round Franz-Josef Land fed upon floating crustaceans, darting down 

 upon them " with a dull splash against the surface of the water." 

 Saxby found fresh- water weeds and a few beetles, probably picked up 

 with the weeds, in the stomachs of birds he shot, but, this apart, the 

 species appears to confine its diet to marine organisms. In this it 

 differs from the species ofLarw, which are omnivorous. It also differs 

 from them in its method of catching fish. While they are content to 

 sweep down to the water, and immerse only head and neck, it drops 

 in head first, like a tern or gannet, from a height of twenty feet or so, 

 cleaves the surface with a splash, and usually disappears completely 

 from sight. It has been seen by Mr. H. Evans winging its way under 

 the water. 1 



When the kittiwake pauses in its flight before dropping, it keeps 

 its head windward. In consequence of this habit, flocks, when follow- 

 ing a shoal of fish, work their way through it till they reach its 

 windward side, and then make a wide flight back, and begin once 

 more on the leeward margin. 2 



In August the young kittiwakes quit the cliffs, and are then to 

 be seen in the neighbouring waters usually in flocks by themselves, 

 with sometimes a few old birds among them. The gregarious instinct, 

 therefore, asserts itself early. That it should at first take the form of 

 association with birds of the same age is probably due to weakness of 

 wing, the young birds not being able to follow the old long distances 

 out to sea. 



At this stage the young are seized and eaten by the larger Gulls, 

 as already noted (p. 168), and the sight of one of these soft, dove-like 

 creatures strangled and pick-axed by the strong hard beak of its 



1 J. H. Harvie-Brown and T. E. Buckley, Fauna of Argyll and the Inner Hebrides, p. 194. 



2 Saxby, Birds of Shetland, p. 330. 



VOL. III. 2B 



