i& BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



Puffin Island. Mr. Howard Saunders writes of the swarms of birds going and 

 coming round some of the islands in the Hebrides, making the horizon quite hazy. 

 The Rev. Murray A. Mathew describing the great nesting stations of cliff birds 

 on Lundy and Skoiner Islands says that at some places it would seem as if there 

 would not be room for another Puffin. " The water beneath the cliffs, almost as 

 far from land as the eye can reach, is black with a multitude of the birds" 

 {" Birds of Devon.") 



At Flamborough the Puffin is called Parrot, and another very expressive name 

 for it is Coulterneb. Other names for it are Willock, (which it shares with other 

 birds) Lunda, Bowger, Mullet, Gulderhead, Bottlenose, Pope, Marrot, Bass-cock, 

 Ailsa-cock, Tomnoddy, Cockandy, Tammy Norie. 



The adult in summer has the iris pale grey. Eyelid orange-red ; patches 

 above and below eye bluish-grey ; ridge (large) at the base of the upper mandible 

 dull yellow ; small ridge at the base of the lower mandible orange- red ; space in 

 front bluish-grey ; fore part of the bill orange-red, with three ridges between 

 the grey space and the ridge of the culmen and gonys, the hindmost, on upper 

 mandible, partly yellow. Probably the bill is not fully developed for more than 

 one year. Rosette of crinkled skin at the angle of the bill orange-yellow. Face 

 and sides of the head and chin light smoke-grey, nearly white in some cases, an 

 irregular sooty-grey patch near and below base of lower mandible ; the outer 

 lower edge of the grey face palest in colour. Forehead, crown, occiput, nape, 

 back and sides of neck, collar round the throat, back, wings and tail black. The 

 forehead, crown and occiput are shaded with grey ; the collar in front inclines 

 to sooty-brown ; the primaries are browner than the rest of the wings and paler 

 on the inner webs ; a narrow light line crosses just above the nape. Thighs 

 greyish-brown. Neck below the collar in front, breast, belly, under tail-coverts 

 and sides of the body white, the last and the flanks marked with blackish. Tarsi 

 and feet reddish-orange, claws dark horn colour. Length about 12 inches, wing 

 6 inches. The sexes are alike, with the exception that the bill of the female is 

 rather less high at the base. 



In winter the Puffin presents a rather different appearance, not because of 

 any remarkable change in the colours of its plumage, but consequent upon certain 

 portions of the bill and other ornaments of the head being shed or moulted or 

 otherwise lost. The bill is then smaller and duller in colour. 



The moult of the bill and palpebral appendages in the Puffin is the subject 

 of a paper by Dr. Louis Bureau (Bull. Soc. Zool. de France, 1878). Mr. J. E. 

 Harting in "The Zoologist" for 1878 gave a resume of the paper (accompanied 

 by a coloured plate) and translations of the more important portions of it. From 



