KITTIWAKE. 335 



perpendicular from the water. Here all the avail- 

 able ledges are requisitioned for nesting purposes. 

 The nests are large and rather better constructed 

 than most of the Gulls' nests. They are made of 

 grass, which is carried up with the clay and soil 

 sticking to it; this by its weight no doubt helps to 

 keep the nest in its precarious position and to prevent 

 it from slipping off to destruction. The interior is 

 formed of seaweeds. 



Two or three eggs are laid, sometimes four, differ- 

 ing much in colour and markings ; some are stone 

 colour, some olive brown or buffish brown and some 

 of a greenish-blue type. These are spotted and 

 blotched with reddish brown, light brown, and grey. 



The general appearance of the Kittiwake is not un- 

 like that of the Common Gull, but it is rather smaller. 



One of the largest colonies of these birds is at 

 Svoerholt, near North Cape, in Norway, which is in- 

 habited by an enormous number of Kittiwakes, of 

 which Seebohm gives the following graphic and de- 

 scriptive account : " It is the custom to fire off a 

 cannon opposite the colony ; peal after peal echoes 

 and re-echoes from the cliffs, every ledge appears to 

 pour forth an endless stream of birds, and long before 

 the last echo has died away it is overpowered by the 

 cries of the birds, whilst the air in every direction 

 exactly resembles a snowstorm, but a snowstorm in 

 a whirlwind. The birds fly in cohorts ; those nearest 

 the ship are all flying in one direction, beyond them 

 other cohorts are flying in a different direction, and 

 so on, until the extreme distance is a confused mass 

 of snowflakes. It looks as if the fjord was a huge 

 chaldron of air, in which the birds were floating, and 

 as if the floating mass was being stirred by an invisible 



