158 



ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS 

 AND REFLECTIONS IN SHETLAND. 



EDMUND SELOUS. 



[Continued from page ijj). 



October i8th.— Four Whimbrels are now walking about 

 on the wet, and, sometimes, on the dry, sand, thrusting their 

 long bill into the former, mostly, or into any httle tuft of 

 sea-weed, lying about, which the tide has brought in. One 

 of them seemed to extract some round-looking object from a 

 hole (a worm-hole ?) in the wet sand, and then carefully replaced 

 it. Then a bravo of the party drives, by turns, each of the others 

 away, advancing upon them with head held a little down, and 

 long bill, presented like a rapier, in spite of its scimitar curve. 

 He makes little mincing steps— the set opening — and looks a 

 professed duellist. The others take him at his own valuation, 

 and retreat for the required distance — -so many yards from a 

 protit-bearing seaweed-heap, for such was the cause of aggres- 

 sion in the lirst instance, after which, as though whetted by 

 success, the demands of the bully seemed to grow. But now 

 it's all over, and they bathe together on the beach, in peace 

 and friendship. At the end they give their wings a most 

 vigorous flapping, during which they sometimes rise a foot or 

 two into the air, and then drop back, and sometimes stand 

 firm, all the while. Why they do not rise, when they do not, 

 and why, when they do, they do not fly away altogether, I try 

 in vain to imagine. No such strength — to all outward seeming, 

 at least — is put forth when they really do fly. What is it, 

 within the bird's volition, which either checks the efficacy of 

 the wing-stroke, though seeming so powerful, or makes the 

 body as lead ? 



The Turnstone, ' though native here and to the manner 

 born,' is anxious about the waves, coming carefully down on 

 the wet surface of the rock, when one recedes from it, and run- 

 ning up again, out of its reach, as it comes in. Does not like 

 the spray, thinks there should be a hniit to spray. When, on 

 the narrow-edged top of a rock, cleft in angles, like a crystal, 

 the sea just comes over, and wets him, a little, he retreats 

 down the safer side of it, and holds his ground ; but when, a 

 little afterwards, a shower of this vile spray is flung broadcast, 

 over it and him, the limit has been reached, and he flies away. 



About a score of Hooded Crows — which, it would seem, are 

 no more than a variety of our southern Carrion Crow — are 

 gathered together, near the shores of a loch. After watching 

 them, some time, walking about and flying here and there, I 

 see one — they are all now on foot — give a sort of start, and 

 as he takes wing, all the rest do too, and they fly, all together, 

 across a corner of the small loch, to a wire fence running along 



Naturalist, 



