264 THE LAND'S END 



The softening of the ugly bird comes a little later 

 when the hooligan has got a mate and both are half 

 beside themselves with joy which they express by 

 rubbing their snaky necks together, crossing and see- 

 sawing them, first on one side then the other, like knife 

 and steel in the butcher's hands. When the nesting- 

 site has been chosen, John Cocking is seen at his best, 

 playing the attentive young husband ; he visits her 

 twenty times an hour, always with something in his 

 beak, a bit of seaweed or a stick, just because he 

 must give her something, and she takes it from him 

 and bows this way and that and puts it down and 

 takes it up again, and out of her overflowing affection 

 gives it back to him " Dear, you must not be so 

 generous ! " And he flies away with it again just 

 to have an excuse to fly back the next minute 

 and insist on her accepting it. The great change, 

 greater even than his new charming manner to- 

 wards his mate, is in his flight on quitting the 

 nesting-place : he flies and returns, and passes and 

 repasses before her, and alights on the rock for a 

 moment and then off again all to exhibit his grace, 

 his imitation of the love-flight of the cushat and 

 turtle-dove. The curious thing is that so heavy and 

 ungainly a creature, with such a laboured flight at 

 other times, does succeed fairly well, as if that new 

 fire in him had made him lighter, more volatile and 

 like the white-winged birds about him. 



The cormorants are the earliest breeders, excepting 

 the ravens, now so much persecuted by the injurious 

 idiots and Philistines who call themselves collectors 



