166 Wonders of the Bird World 



Yet even with the Auks there is not uniformity in their 

 mode of nesting, for if the Guillemots and Razorbills are 

 content to lay their egg on the shelf of a bare cliff, the 

 Puffins resort to a burrow, and the Black Guillemot (Uria 

 grylle) to a cleft or fissure in a rock. The latter species is 

 a very interesting bird to any one who visits the North Sea 

 in the spring. Far out to sea he may meet with the Common 

 Guillemot {Uria troile) and the Puffin {Fratercula arctica), 

 so far out, in fact, that it is scarcely possible that the birds 

 so encountered can be members of the communities at that 

 time nesting on the cliffs of Flamborough or in the 

 Lofoten Islands, but must be stray birds who have no 

 intention of nesting that year. As the coast of Norway is 

 approached, however, the Black Guillemot puts in an 

 appearance, flying in pairs or in small parties in the fjords 

 or among the rocky islands off the coast, and laying its 

 eggs in fissures of the cliffs by no means easy of access. 

 And yet the egg of this bird is not pure white, but has 

 black spots and grey underlying markings. Many places 

 where the Black Guillemot breeds were shown to me in 

 May of the present year (1898), but their homes were yet 

 untenanted, and it was only in June that a nesting-place 

 was discovered for me by Bernhard Hanson, my young 

 Norwegian assistant, under circumstances which might 

 have ended the writing of this book for good and all. The 

 boy left me the task of holding the boat close to the foot 

 of a sheer cliff, up which he climbed till he came to the 

 cleft into which he had tracked the Guillemot, and with the 

 aid of my walking-stick he succeeded in dragging the 

 female bird off her egg, and then stood suspended on a 

 ledge with the flapping bird in his hand, drawing blood 

 with every peck of her vicious bill. Nothing remained 

 for the boy but to jump into the boat, which I had moved 

 on to a shelving rock covered, as it turned out to be, with 

 large and sharp-pointed limpets. Having placed the 



