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THE BLACK GUILLEMOT. 



Uria Grylle, Lath. 



) 



PLATE CCXIX. Adult in Summer, Adult in Winter, and Young. 



It was a frightful thing to see my good Captain, Hexry Emery, 

 swinging on a long rope upon the face of a rocky and crumbling emi- 

 nence, at a height of several hundred feet from the water, in search of 

 the eggs of the Black Guillemot, with four or five sailors holding the 

 rope above, and walking along the edge of the precipice. I stood watch- 

 ing the motions of the adventurous sailor. When the friction of the rope 

 by which he was suspended loosened a block, which with awful crash came 

 tumbling down from above him, he, with a promptness and dexterity that 

 appeared to me quite marvellous, would, by a sudden jerk, throw himself 

 aside to the right or left, and escape the danger. Now he would run 

 his arm into a fissure, which, if he found it too deep, he would probe 

 with a boat-hook. Whenever he chanced to touch a bird, it would come 

 out whirring like a shot in his face ; while others came flying from afar 

 toward their beloved retreats with so much impetuosity as almost to alarm 

 the bold rocksman. After much toil and trouble he procured only a few 

 eggs, it not being then the height of the breeding season. You may ima- 

 gine, good Reader, how relieved I felt when I saw IVIr Emery drawn up, 

 and once more standing on the bold eminence waving his hat as a signal 

 of success. This happened in one of the Magdeleine Islands, in the Gulf 

 of St Lawrence. 



During severe winters, I have seen the Black Guillemot playing over 

 the waters as far south as the shores of Maryland. Such excursions, 

 however, are of rare occurrence, and it is seldom that any of these birds 

 are to be seen until you reach the Bay of Boston. About the different 

 entrances of the Bay of Fundy, this species is a constant resident, and 

 many individuals breed in fissures, at a moderate height above the water, 

 on the rocky shores of the Island of Grand Manan, and others in the 

 same latitude. Proceeding farther toward the north-east, we found them 

 on Jesticoe Island, and wherever else we happened to touch on our way 

 to Labrador, in which country there is a regular nursery of these birds. 

 Unlike the Foolish and Thick-billed Guillemots, or the Razor -billed 



