Birds by Land and Sea 



feud or amity, you cannot tell. You interpret them 

 by human likenesses, and they are always sombre, 

 wild, and weird. 



And the kittiwake that least of gulls, with its 

 pure white head and body and pearl-grey mantle, 

 sitting upon its seaweed nest just poised on some 

 scanty shelf of rock surely so sweet a bird will 

 have as sweet a voice. But one calls, and then 

 another, and out of the Guillemots' Hole they come 

 trooping all together, wheeling round and round as 

 they cry, " Kit-a-ey f Kit-a-ey!" Is not this the 

 very voice of ailing children, fretful, fanciful, but 

 at bottom sorrowful too, as if the fretfulness were 

 their own, but the sorrow rose from some impersonal 

 deep thus to find superficial utterance ? When they 

 have done their solemn play, they return to their 

 places, and stand like little white and grey saints in 

 their niches in the rock. Whether they sometimes 

 take the liberty of sitting in each other's nests, or the 

 male occupies it while his mate goes for a turn in 

 the air, I do not know ; but the returning bird will 

 at times dump down with a scream on the nest, 

 from which the sitting one slips just in time to 

 avoid the impact. 



At times a sudden excitement sets the whole 

 colony crying, and the screaming and wailing of the 

 kittiwakes mingle with the low coughing bark and 

 moanings of the guillemots, so that one might 

 imagine that the very bedlam of the sea had broken 

 bounds. 



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