Birds by Land and Sea 



below the cliff head. His mate, however, did not 

 regard the advancing camera with the same indiffer- 

 ence. She had been sailing backwards and forwards 

 at the edge of the cliff, crying " Ha-ha-ha-ha ! " a 

 cry which, although expressed in the form of 

 laughter, was yet delivered in tones of menace. I 

 was less than a foot from the edge of a four-hundred- 

 foot precipice, with my head enveloped in the 

 focussing-cloth, when this bird swooped at the 

 black-headed, spindle-shanked monster advancing 

 upon her mate, and made my heart stop as she 

 cuffed me with swishing wing in passing. 



There is not much danger in this sort of work 

 if one keeps a cool head ; the danger lies in the 

 " unexpected," which may prompt one to precipitate 

 action. I remember being once in a similar position 

 when a dark slide slipped from my coat-pocket and 

 fell over the edge of the cliff. My first impulse 

 was to snatch at it, but, having already had one or 

 two " shockers," I refrained, and was rewarded by 

 seeing the slide settle in a bunch of scrub, from 

 which I was able to haul it up in a more deliberate 

 manner. 



Seeming to have satisfied her wrath in some 

 measure, the female herring-gull took her stand 

 beside her mate, and I exposed a plate and had done 

 with them. 



In the cliff below, a number of guillemots and 

 kittiwakes were nesting, and at any time the old 

 herring-gull could bring out the whole colony by 



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