132 Ornithological Observations and Reflections in Shetland. 



actual attack is made — at least I have never seen this, and 

 doubt if it is ever the case. Fishermen here assert — and they 

 certainly belong to the class of persons having ' large oppor- 

 tunities of observation ' — that if the fish, when relinquished, 

 should be missed by the ' Bonxie ' in its fall, the latter will 

 never pick it up afterwards, prefering to lose it, if he cannot 

 seize it before it strikes the water. But let not the amateur or 

 cockney or ' week-end ' naturalist be put off from doubting, 

 or using his own eyes, by this, for, in field natural history, a 

 mountain of opportunity produces commonly, a mouse of 

 observation, and I have twice, now, within a short space of 

 time (and also the other day) seen the Bonxie do this very thing. 

 At least, under the required circumstances, I saw it dip down 

 on the water for something, and for what else could it have 

 been ? One of these occasions was when two or three Skuas 

 were chasing the same Kittiwake, but the successful robber 

 was not molested by the others, and so it may always be — 

 ' Hawks should not pike out hawks' een.' 



This piratical parasitism of the Arctic Skua upon Terns, 

 Gulls, Puffins and other of its fellow fish-eaters, has, of course 

 long been known, and is often referred to. Another, and, I 

 think, still more interesting example of the same thing, inasmuch 

 as, here, the interrelation of vassal and suzerain is between two 

 species more widely sundered, if not (having regard to the last 

 case) in structure, yet in their typical habits of life, one strictly 

 a land, the other, not so strictly, a seabird, is apparently 

 less well known, since, striking as the sight is, I have not been 

 able to find any proper account of it — nothing coming at all 

 near to what I have myself seen. It is a propos, I think, 

 therefore, a little to diversify these northern notes with an 

 extract from some others (or, rather, a summary of them) 

 which I made years ago, far south, on the Dorsetshire coast. 

 This appeared in the Saturday Review,* but only once, whereas 

 field notes with anything in them, ought to keep on appearing, 

 if we cherish the hope that a distant posterity will be better 

 supplied with information than we ourselves are, in its standard 

 works on ornithology — as surely we must, since it is pretty 

 plain that, as things are going, it will be much worse supplied 

 with the subject of ornithology — birds, f The extract is as 



* April 12th, 1902. 



I Hardly a day, now, but some proposition or exhortation appears in 

 one or other of the papers, to no longer protect, to ' keep down ' or even to 

 wholly exterminate some bird that, without any counsel for the defence, 

 and on a one-sided, ' hanging-judge ' summing-up, is found guilty of being 

 'injurious.' It need not be very injurious. Let it but be shown to do 

 any damage at all — to eat a few grains of wheat, mixed in with its insects, 

 now and then (the grain, they say, mounts up — mum the insects) — and, 

 straightway, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill ! — a Hunnish p-n^an. There is no offset, 

 apparently. However charming, however interesting, however instruc- 



Naturalist, 



