324 
ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS AND 
REFLECTIONS IN SHETLAND.* 
EDMUND SELOUS. 
THE Common Cormorant, though greatly outnumbered by the 
Shag, here, is still a Shetland bird. I saw some six or seven 
of them together a few days ago, and to-day I located another 
small colony in a bay on the north-eastern coast-line. They 
were assembled on some low rocks, which some of them would 
leave, from time to time, to disport themselves in the bay. 
Here they came into shallow water near the beach, diving all 
the while at more or less frequent intervals. Presumably 
they were fishing, yet they never had anything in their bills 
on coming up. One of them swam about amongst the long 
brown seaweed exposed by the tide as it sank, and it certainly 
seemed to me to be seizing hold of it, as the Eider Duck had 
done, but as the distance was greater in this case, I could not 
make so sure of it through the glasses. But the other day at 
a projecting point, which, according to the state of the tide, 
is either a peninsula or an island, I surprised one of these 
birds amongst a quantity of such seaweed and right in shore. 
Unfortunately it saw me and at once made out into the clear 
sea, but it would hardly have been where it was except for 
some purpose connected with the seaweed and so thick was 
this, and so shallow the water, which was quite filled up with 
it, that fish could hardly have swum there. It seems probable, 
therefore, that the Common Cormorant (which would prob- 
ably mean the Shag also), as well as the Eider Duck, feeds to 
a certain extent either on this common brown seaweed itself 
or on something that it finds there which is not a true fish. 
Both the Shag and the Common Cormorant are affectionate 
birds, but of the two I am inclined to think the latter the more 
so, since, though here it is much the less common of the two 
and it being now not the love season, yet it has, notwith- 
standing, contrived to bring more evidence of this under my 
notice. In the Shag, for instance, the conjugal tie seems now 
more or less in abeyance, but these Cormorants still swim in 
pairs and by sometimes coming very close indeed to one 
another, as also by diving and often emerging about the same 
time and not widely separated, and in other less definable yet 
unmistakeable ways, show that they are mutually happy in 
each others society. There is certainly spousal attachment, 
and this may be exhibited in a way that seems almost playful, 
as near at any rate to that complex form of mentality as I 
have seen a bird get or look as if it had got, for I once saw one 
ee 
* Made in IQII. 
Natnralist 
