8 BIRD HAUNTS AND NATURE MEMORIES 



is more fanciful and less correct; he repeats some stories 

 about the bird fighting with and overcoming the raven, 

 a fable told by Stanley in his " Book of Birds." Accord- 

 ing to Evans, " the fierceness of the parent is incredible; 

 no bird nor beast will venture to attack them ; sometimes 

 the sea-raven will dare to be so rash, but generally he 

 forfeits his life for his temerity. . . . The parent catches him 

 under the throat with her beak and darts her claws into 

 his breast; the raven, wounded, screams most dismally 

 for quarter, but the offended bird is deaf to the entreaty 

 and makes directly for her proper element, the ocean, 

 where the raven is quickly drowned, and the puffin returns 

 in triumph to the nest." Oh, Mr. Evans, and you a 

 parson ! Ravens have bred on Puffin, and a pair still 

 nests in the neighbourhood; I have often seen the fine 

 birds passing the island ; they have not all been drowned ! 

 But the ferocious puffin has foes, very dangerous ones, 

 nesting near by, for there are, as a rule, a fair number 

 of disembowelled puffin corpses on the grass; the lesser 

 black-backed gull could explain, no doubt, and, if not, we 

 can guess that a pair of great black-backs, visitors if not 

 occasional residents, know something about the slaughter. 

 One day, in the nest of a lesser black-backed gull, we found 

 one egg exact in size and markings to that of the larger 

 species, but no great black-back was about, and it may 

 have been an abnormal egg. 



On the ledges of the steep cliffs guillemots sit solemnly 

 on their single eggs; it is amusing to watch them alight, 

 somewhat clumsily on the narrow ledge, whir their short 

 wings for a second or two until they adjust the balance 

 of their upright body, then poke the big green or white 

 mottled egg between their legs. Razor-bills crouch in 

 cracks, and do not sit upright like the guillemots; and in 

 one place in particular a fair-sized colony of kittiwakes 

 is established. These dainty and small gulls, delicate 



