were chipped by falling detritus. We took extreme care on the occasion of this 

 year's first visit, but pebbles would fall in spite of our best efforts, and it was a 

 relief to find that this year's nest occupied a niche well out upon the upper, or 

 hanging, wall of the well, and was, consequently, much less exposed to accidental 

 bombardment. 



On the 11th of July, having finished with "Laurie's prospect", and finding 

 ourselves well started up the cliff, which is at this point about 425 feet high, my 

 son and I conceived the notion of scaling the cliff outright, and of taking in this 

 prospect on the way up. Don't ask us how we ever did itl There is no account- 

 ing for judgment when the blood is up. There is a cool stretch of that cliff, 

 midway, a rock face of forty feet with a few endeared bosses, which I shall never 

 recall again without horror — and pride. The nest, which we eventually passed — 

 in much easier circumstances — contained only three eggs. 



I had to return, then, single-handed, on the 14th, and armed with pike, 

 rope, and a twenty pound camera. In all my experience of Leucos I had never 

 been able to photograph a set of eggs. Even now the sun did not fall full upon 

 the eggs, which, nevertheless, had to be "snapped" because of the impossibility 

 of securing a base for a tripod. By dint of suspending the camera from a pro- 

 jecting rock above until I could descend to the nest level; and by dint of working 

 out, camera in hand, and unsupported, between two opposing walls, I succeeded 

 in firing down between braced legs, and secured several rather indifferent snap 

 shots. This nest is quite the handsomest in our series by reason of its mossy 

 content. 



This has been, frankly, a record of personal adventure, rather than a study 

 of nesting habits; yet it is by this blending of observation and effort that we ac- 

 quire experience. Information may be acquired from books, but experience may 

 be acquired only by effort. And when you think of it, you will not so much 

 wonder that men are mad enough to seek a fragile egg shell at so heavy a cost, 

 as you will wonder at yourself that you have not tasted — if you have not — the 

 high wine of such adventure. 



A LITTLE KNOWN AMERICAN BIRD 



By the Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain, M. A., M. B. 0. U., H. F. A. 0. U. 



While in Spitzbergen during the summer of 1921, one of the birds which 

 we were always on the watch for was the Large-billed Puffin, Fratercula arctica 

 naumanni. Not only did we want a series of skins, but we had also a very keen 

 desire to find out something about its nesting habits; for the fact remains that 

 up to 1921 no one had ever taken an egg of this form in Spitzbergen. Even the 

 indefatigable Mr. A. C. Bent, when preparing the article on this race for his work 

 on the "Life Histories of North American Diving Birds", could get measure- 

 ments of only seven eggs, all apparently from Greenland. There is an element 

 of uncertainty even about these, for the Puffin of Southern Greenland is the 

 typical race, F. arctica arctica; and we do not know enough about the ornithology 

 of west Greenland to say exactly what the limits of the two forms are. The 

 Large-billed Puffin has also another notch to its credit, having been one of the 

 few Spitzbergen breeding birds to defeat all the efforts of Professor Koenig and 

 his party in 1907 and 1908; for the only Puffins' eggs obtained by him were those 

 of F. arctica arctica from Bear Island. It was, therefore, with very great interest 

 that we watched out big-nosed friends "scuttering" away from the sloop over the 

 still waters of the Ice Fjord on a calm evening towards the end of June. Watch- 

 ing one of these birds come up ahead, and which upon finding the sloop un- 

 pleasantly near, half flutters, half runs along the surface of the water for fifty 

 yards, flops down into the water again, and after one more look around, dis- 

 appears under water, — it is hard to believe that it is the same bird which passes 

 by with rapidly beating little wings, heading straight for some distant bird-cliff, 

 and leaving our oil-driven boat standing. However, here were the birds; so the 



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