PLATE I 

 COMMON GUILLEMOT. Uria troile 



June 4///, 1895. This Plate is from a photograph of the south stack of 'The 

 Pinnacles' on the Farne Islands. This stack is absolutely crowded with 

 Guillemots, some of them having to be contented with the tiny ledges on the 

 face of the rock which are not already occupied by the Kittiwakes. It is a 

 very difficult thing to get a satisfactory photo of the Guillemots here, as they 

 are never still for an instant, and seem to spend the whole day bobbing their 

 heads up and down and flapping their short wings ; the exposure has 

 therefore to be absolutely instantaneous, to the detriment of the darker parts 

 of the rocks. It was very amusing to see the incoming birds landing on the 

 shoulders of their neighbours and elbowing their way to their own places. 



There was a continuous stream of birds going and coming to this rock, 

 so we supposed that some of the birds had young, as many of them brought 

 small fish in their bills ; but we were quite unable to see either an egg or a 

 young bird, even with the aid of a powerful glass, as the birds were so 

 tightly packed. We saw a good number of ' ringed ' birds with the glass, but 

 could not make out the percentage of them with any degree of accuracy. 



Sometimes a Guillemot lays its egg on the ledges of the main island, 

 but it is almost invariably destroyed at once by the Lesser Black-backed Gulls, 

 as the bird has not the protection of the multitude of neighbours. 



Very often a small flock of Guillemots would swim round between 'The 

 Pinnacles' and the Island, diving after the small fish, and, standing as we 

 were on the top of the cliff above them, we could distinctly see them going 

 along under the water, using their wings as a means of progression, a thin 

 stream of air-bubbles rising in their track. They very seldom came up again 

 without a tiny fish held crosswise in their bills. 



75 



