754 



THE NATURE BOOK 



Towards the middle of ]May you see tlieni 

 streaming in from every hand, dropj)ing 

 exhausted on the chff-ledges, the boulder- 

 strewn slopes and the stack rocks, till 

 the earth seems covered, the sea dotted, 

 and the air teeming with countless birds. 

 And still they come — snowstorms of 

 kittiwakcs, the puffin with his gaudy 

 wedding beak, the grunting razorbill, 

 the snake-necked guillemot, the petrels 

 and shearwaters, the cormorants back 

 to the stench and swelter of their nests, 

 and the hordes of thieving gulls — herring, 

 greater and lesser black-backed — to take 

 toll of their eggs, the hawk of their lives, 

 and the skua to claim tithes of their 

 lishing. 



The nursery is generally some in- 

 accessible sea-girt precipice, broken here 

 and there by steep grass-grown slopes, 

 piles of huge boulders affording number- 

 less holes, nooks and crannies — ready- 

 made burrows for the razorbills and 



MALIi KA^OKBILI. 



puftins. The guillemots line the narrow 

 ledges on the \'ery face of the cliff, laying 

 their solitary egg in places where destruc- 

 tion seems to threaten it every instant, 

 or mass together on the broader benches 

 and the summits of the stack rocks. 

 The kittiwakes form a colony apart, 

 taking advantage of any slight irregu- 

 larity in the surface of the rock to affix 

 their nest, almost as does the house- 

 martin against a slieer wall. Bits of sea- 

 weed, grasses and straws are trodden 

 down and cemented by slime and mud 

 brought up on the birds' feet, till the 

 nest becomes one solid mass adhering 

 firmly to the rock ; and there they brood 

 high above the warring of the waves, 

 like so many sculptured saints in natural 

 niches, drowning the monotonous roar 

 of the surf by their incessant wailing 

 cries. Drop a stone over the chff-side, 

 and immediately the birds sail forth in 

 a dense body on extended wing, then, 

 quickly recovering from their 

 fright they check themselves 

 with much beating of wings, 

 and the pearly grey cloud 

 dissolves into a thousand shim- 

 mering units, whirling, rising 

 and falling like an eddy of 

 snowflakes, whilst from every 

 throat there comes the indig- 

 nant scream " Kitti - wa-ake, 

 kitti-wa-ake ! " 



Gradually the storm subsides 

 and the birds return to their 

 nests, for they do not willingly 

 quit them for long. Only too 

 well do they know that their 

 larger relatives are more to he 

 feared than any human being, 

 and such is the boldness and 

 greed of the herring and lesser 

 black-backed gulls that I have 

 often seen them swoop down 

 upon some unguarded nest with- 

 in iifteen yards of me, and, 

 driving their ])()werful beaks 

 through an egg, carry off their 

 booty to devour at leisure on 

 some dizzy height. To this the 

 j)hotographer owes his oppor- 

 tunity. Creeping from ledge to 

 ledge along the face of the cliff, 

 avoiding any quick or sudden 

 movement, it is not hard to 



