652 BRITISH BIRDS. 



swim with great ease., and under the surface it dives almost like a fish,, 

 using its wings as freely as in the air. On land it looks a lazy bird and 

 is seldom seen to walk. It sits for long together perched on a rock, 

 digesting the fish with which it has overgorged itself, but it is generally 

 too wary to be surprised. It is a remarkably silent bird, but occasionally 

 utters a harsh croak. Its food is almost entirely fish, and from time 

 immemorial it has been tamed and trained to catch fish, a practice still 

 continued by the Chinese and Japanese. 



At the Fame Islands the Cormorants breed on an irregular reef of rocks 

 rising on one side somewhat abruptly out of the sea to a height of ten to 

 twenty feet, and sloping on the other gradually down to a rocky 

 shingly shore. When I first visited the island sixteen years ago, we saw 

 the weird-looking birds standing some on the rock and some on the edges 

 of their nests, stretching out their long snake-like necks, evidently much 

 alarmed at the approach of our boat. Before we were near enough to 

 land they took wing, and retired to a distant part of the island, one old 

 bird, apparently the patriarch of the colony, being the last to leave. The 

 entire surface of the rocks was yellow-washed with the droppings of the 

 birds, and fragments of fish were lying about in all directions, so that the 

 smell was very strong. We counted upwards of seventy nests large 

 structures, heaps of seaweed, from one to two feet high, and generally 

 lined with the fresh green leaves ojf the sea-parsley and other maritime 

 plants growing on the island. The number of eggs in each nest never 

 exceeded three. Before we had fairly pushed our boat from the rocks, the 

 birds began to return to their nests. We afterwards visited a much 

 smaller colony in another part of the same island. One of the lighthouse- 

 keepers told me that Cormorants are to be seen near these islands all 

 the year round ; they begin to repair their nests in April and have eggs 

 early in May. 



In 1880 I visited a much larger colony of Cormorants in an entirely 

 different locality, on the flat banks of the Horster Meer, between Amster- 

 dam and Utrecht. The country is perfectly flat, and the nearest sea- 

 water is the south shore of the Z aider Zee, some eight or ten miles to 

 the north. The colony consisted of about two hundred nests, placed upon 

 a bare piece of ground, and all within a radius of not more than six or 

 seven yards. The nests, many of which touched each other, were piles of 

 sticks and reeds from one to four feet high, and were generally lined with 

 a little fresh green grass. The foundations of many of the nests looked 

 very old and rotten; but it appears that a new nest is built every year upon 

 the ruins of the old one. The locality had evidently been occupied a con- 

 siderable time, for all trace of vegetation had long ago been burnt off by the 

 superabundance of manure ; the ground and the sides of the nests were 

 white with the droppings of the birds, and scattered here and there were 



