The Zoologist— June, 1870. 216» 



my face. The maze of birds, when they have been disturbed, at a 

 rock station is something overwhelming: the air seems choked vvith a 

 seethiTig whirl of birds, and the head and eye are so bewildered that 

 one turns quite giddy, and is fain to hold on and lie down in a cleft of 

 rock. Tlie air just around seems so full of whirling wings for a few 

 moments that one would wonder the birds did not strike against one 

 another, for as the report touches the rock and rolls along its sides 

 they seem to shoot off the ledges all together in a long line ; but I see 

 that a great number are still sitting on their eggs; it is only the males 

 and the females with new-laid eggs which have flown off. High above 

 the maze of birds, see, hang the robber gulls, the lesser blackback 

 and the herring gulls ! from the stacks among the white sea-foam, 

 from the grassy islets, their lonely home, here they come! han^^in.^ 

 over my head, crying " og-og— og-og," then swiftly, silentu" 

 roaming the face of the precipice for unprotected eggs; rich will 

 be the feast, and many a sad cry will go out over the waters 

 to-night from the sea-birds. And swiftly along the rock-sides on 

 which the clouds of birds are gradually settling, see the gray and 

 black "hoodie"— that haled bird !— quickly running the gauntlet 

 among the mobbing gulls and rock birds, who buffet and mob 

 him, but, quick of wing, he slips between, and the egg of the 

 kittiwake he will impale and carry off, and the hard egg of the 

 guillemot he will brush off with his wing to break it, and gorge on 

 the half-hatched mess. 



When the storm-cloud of birds is thickest, and the air is 

 darkened and clogged with whirling wings, they seem to have a 

 rotatory motion, all slowly circling round, but the flight of the 

 heavy rock birds is so straight and rapid that they appear to keep 

 more by themselves, while the kittiwake gulls lightly flicker about in 

 thick flocks. Far beneath, on the waves, the sea is alive with razor- 

 bills, guillemots, pufBns and kittiwake gulls: the razorbill auks 

 are sitting in strings and circles, lazily floating : some are diving, very 

 many splashing along the surface; these are most likely females, 

 which generally fly down to the sea to clean themselves' from the' 

 horrible parasites which infest their foul ledges, while their lords stay 

 at home to guard the eggs from the robber gulls and hoodie crows. 

 The puffins are diving and floating and splashing about singly, their 

 smaller size and red beak and legs marking them from the others. 

 The kittiwake gulls, which do not dive, are sitting on the water or 



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