Ornithological Observations in Shetland. 265 



or four little Ringed Plovers, and walk seekingly where sand 

 and tide meet. Soon, however, they seek the pebbles and sandy 

 shingle higher up, and standing there, also turn their heads bed- 

 wards, which, in a front view, gives them the lugubrious 

 appearance of having all been decapitated just above the little 

 white collar. The apparent necessity of exercising their wings, 

 every now and then, breaks these slumbers. They are opened 

 for a moment, and, in leisurely fashion, spread vertically 

 upwards, by which the suddenly revealed under feathering 

 gleams out a soft, silver white. And since the bird, to do this, 

 is awake, however short the time some fraction of it must be 

 given to preening, and the indispensable little bob. A good 

 preliminary for the shaking off of sleep is to hop a little on the 

 one leg that is commonly in use whilst it lasts. 



Their colouring certainly makes these birds very incon- 

 spicuous amongst the stones they delight in. Whether they 

 know this, in effect, and trade on it — that is to say whether 

 natural selection has shaped their habits as part of the same 

 process by which she has produced their outward garb — is a 

 question which may be variously, but never, I suppose, finally 

 answered. I have walked up and down the fore-shore, parallel 

 with a group of them, decreasing the distance between us with 

 each turn. At fifteen paces they stood firm. At ten, after 

 huddling a little closer to the water, they went up. Eleven 

 paces — they must be natural and not overdone ones — is pretty 

 near to get to birds. 



A Herring Gull is swimming near the shore, followed closely 

 by her big young one, who, with bowing head, and little piping 

 cry, presses importunately to be fed — but she will none of him. 

 A few others, farther off, are also thus followed by their chicks, 

 brown, but as big, or nearly so, as they are. I have not seen 

 one fed, but they are not driven away. The parent's plan here, 

 is to fly away herself. This also seems to apply to the Shag— 

 at least I have seen it, but not the other. There are as many 

 light as dark ones to be seen together now, yet very few are 

 still being fed. 



A pair of Rock Pipits, one would say, if one went by 

 topogrpahy, but otherwise Titlarks, now run and flit along the 

 sea-shore, pecking amidst the pebbles at the moist edge. 

 Sometimes, with keen eye and investigative step, they draw 

 near to rocks which are to them as sundered masses of the cliffs 

 (here called ' stacks ') to us, at the hanging seaweed of which 

 they pull daintily, their plain but dapper little bodies standing 

 out against the wet base, smooth and naked, in a very charming 

 manner. Certainly they seem to me, these little pipits, to be 

 of the meadow and not the rock kind. Their bodies are longer 

 and lankier, as well as lighter coloured, and moreover they both 

 came from meadows, and, having returned to them, come not 

 again. When first seen upon the borderland — the turfy bank 



1917 Aug 1. 



