THROUGH THE YEAR 73 



them were about a dozen young, which swung 

 and glided and soared with all the ease and power 

 of their parents. A young gull's wing at mid- 

 summer seems to grow with the speed of many a 

 plant in May. It is hardly in the air before the air 

 has made it perfect. 



A puffin is comic where a saddleback or a herring 

 gull is noble in mien and pose. Yet a puffin, despite 

 its feeble-looking wing, its auk-like wing, is fast in 

 flight. It works its wings at a great rate, and the 

 result is swift and straight flight. The sunset whirl 

 of the puffin a whirl, I doubt not, of ecstasy or 

 passion is most strange to see. I never saw its 

 end, and I dare say it goes on far into the night. 

 Bringing a pair of glasses to bear on the puffins as 

 they floated on the sea below the stack islands, I 

 found they were illumined by bands of rose and 

 purple in certain lights, just as the swans and tufted 

 ducks and pochards are illumined on the lake. 



CUCKOO AND REDBREAST 



Two years running I saw the young cuckoo fed 

 by the pipits. This was on a Northern moor, where 

 the bird is hatched later than near the South Coast. 

 One year the young cuckoo was being fed in August 

 by a pair of meadow pipits ; next year, at the same 

 place, a grass field at the edge of the moor, one 

 poor pipit was feeding two cuckoos that were almost 

 full grown and strong on the wing. Now in a 

 third year, in Sussex, I have found a new foster- 

 parent of the cuckoo the redbreast. The redbreast 



