Ornithological Observations and Reflections in Shetland. 385 
between them. The Kittiwakes seemed to repose the greatest 
confidence in these Herring Gulls—there were over a hundred 
and thirty of the former, exclusive of those that were bathing. 
Why this attendance, as it were, of the Herring Gulls on the 
voung Kittiwakes ? 
I forgot to enter that, coming back yesterday, along the 
loch, | found a young but full-sized Herring Gull floating dead 
in the water, which seemed itself to have been treated as 
the Kittiwakes are by its kind. It was back downwards, 
and a cavity had been made below the breast through which 
some of the intestines had been pulled out and were hanging 
in strings. What bird could have done this? Possibly— 
though I have never seen any sign of it myself—a Great 
Black-back, but I could not help the disagreeable suspicion 
that it was the work of the mature Herring ean itself. 
Two of the last-named birds fishing in the voe, as the tide 
sinks, for something which they swim about and _ specially 
look for, either at the bottom of, or some distance under, the 
water, but without ever dipping the head till they plunge for 
it. The first of these birds to attract my attention was farther 
down the voe than the one I had watched some days previously, 
and, unlike that one, he did not fly up into the air before plung- 
ing, but either simply bobbed down his head and turned his 
tail up, like a tame duck in a pond, or else rose, as it were, on 
the water, or at most just a little above it. He made 
several plunges of this kind, but I could not see that he got 
anything, though he very well may have. The other Gull, 
which was fishing in the same bay and may have been the same 
bird as that of my former entry, rose every time, as that had 
done, decisively into the air, and plunged, as one may say, from 
the wing, always, as said above, after swimming irregularly 
about and peering down into the water in a way which made 
his object unmistakeable. He missed twice, as it seemed to 
me, but the third time came up with something in his beak, 
which he swallowed. It was obvious, from the bird’s move- 
ments that what he was in search or pursuit of was in a state 
of motion, which precludes its having been some shell-fish 
attached to the rocks. Its appearance when brought up, did 
not at all suggest a fish, but seemed reconcilable allowing for 
the distance, with that of a crab, and, putting all the signs 
together, I think it is probably crabs that these gulls thus fish 
for. 
Hooded Crows perch upon the seaweed-covered rocks at 
low water, and the glasses reveal motions of the bird which 
may either be tweakings at the seaweed, or pickings or peckings 
off of molluscs from the face of the rock—TI think the latter, or, 
if both, this more particularly. They go much, also, amongst 
the loose dry stones, above high-water mark, of such beaches 


1916 Dec. 1. 
2B 
