268 Ornithological Observations in Shetland. 



The Kittiwakes, in so far as I am able to count them, 

 number some ninety odd, but must really be well over a hundred, 

 being, in some parts, so closely packed that it is impossible 

 for me to make out every individual. I have not sat long, 

 thus watching, when, all at once, in ' this very now of time,' 

 there comes that collective burst from, more or less, total 

 inaction into fullest sudden activity, which I find it so hard 

 to understand — for the normal channels of sense do not seem 

 adequate here, and nobody understands thought-transference, 

 if it be that. This time, there is all at once, a great waving 

 of a host of wings, as the whole of the birds rise and sweep off 

 over the loch, from which, after a few seconds, they sweep back 

 as usual, but whilst about half return to the same place, the 

 rest go down where I first saw them bathing, some couple of 

 hundred yards or so away. It appeared to me that the move- 

 ment began at one end of the assemblage — instantaneously as 

 far as a number of pairs of wings were concerned — and became 

 universal about a second afterwards. But this may very well 

 have been because my fixed gaze, through the glasses, could 

 not concentrate on the whole extended line at once. Certainly, 

 in a mere moment or two, the whole flock were in the air, with 

 the grass, from which they had gone up, perfectly bare, not 

 a single bird staying behind. Some attendant Herring Gulls 

 were of the party, and rose and went off with the rest. There 

 was absolutely nothing, so far as I could see, to startle these 

 Kittiwakes, and, by the very conditions of things here, there 

 hardly could have been. In my judgment, however, this 

 cause is excluded by the very nature of he phenomenon. 



After this, I walked towards the east coast, in the same 

 direction as yesterday, and coming within view of the loch, 

 again saw a number of Herring Gulls collected at the same spot. 

 I counted, at first, fifty-two, and, during the time I watched 

 them, the number varied (approximately) from this, to sixty 

 and thirty-seven. There were no Kittiwakes, the single alien 

 being a Great Blackbacked Gull. It was 2-20 p.m. when I 

 sat down to watch these birds, an ordeal — and, during the latter 

 stages I may well call it so — which lasted till just upon 4. 

 During all this time, there was a continual passage of birds, 

 in more or less numbers, as indicated above, between the loch, 

 where they bathed and disported, and the gathering-ground, 

 where they stood or sat, preening or sunning themselves, 

 for it was sunny most of the time, but so cold, latterly, that the 

 sun itself seemed to partake of this quality. Many also dis- 

 persed themselves, feeding, over the hills, but most of these, 

 as also of the bathers, either came back or went away altogether. 

 But there was no general movement amongst those that re- 

 mained on the shore, and, at the last, may have numbered 

 some forty. Just before 4, three or four birds, with a little 

 preliminary run, flew off towards the sea, and these were 



Naturalist, 



