1 2 The Bird Life of an Outer Island. [Sess. 



least as to how it is actually done. Not that we thought that 

 there was much of a problem about it, but that constantly re- 

 curring statement that the Guillemot carries her young down 

 to the sea, and the lack of corresponding accurate evidence to 

 support it, irritated us and constrained us to prove it one way 

 or the other. During the first few days of our sojourn — and 

 you must understand that the nesting season last year was an 

 exceptionally late one for all birds whose breeding is affected 

 by weather — there were no abnormal movements on the cliffs 

 that we could see. There were large numbers of young on 

 the ledges, but no sign of any departing, no desire on the part 

 of any of them to do anything but snuggle and sleep and eat 

 beside their mothers. When the parents were disturbed by 

 our arrival on the ledges, the immediate tendency of the 

 whole of the offspring of a ledge was to rush panic-stricken 

 together into some innermost corner away from the sea. Some 

 of the illustrations we procured show this tendency well, and 

 in the light of subsequent events it is one upon which I wish 

 to lay stress. From 6th to 9th July we had four days of 

 Atlantic fog and rain, and all work on the cliffs was suspended 

 — for the nonce we studied man and his habitations as they 

 have evolved, cut off from the rest of the world — and it was 

 not until 10th July that we had another opportunity for 

 watching the behaviour of the young Guillemot ; and when- 

 ever we approached the cliffs that morning we were conscious 

 of a change — of a new note rising amid the babel of sea-fowl 

 voices, to which we were well accustomed. We had heard the 

 note before — it was the voice of the parent Guillemot to its 

 child — but it had never dominated the general clamour as it 

 plainly did now. When I got down to a favourite perching- 

 place of my own, where I could sit about fifty feet above the 

 surging ocean, and have Eazorbills and Guillemots and Kitti- 

 wakes all about me, I saw at once that there were two or 

 three young Guillemots in the water, diving and disporting 

 themselves as if they had been accustomed to the element for 

 years instead of hours. I soon began to see also that the 

 young Guillemots left on the ledges beside me were not 

 crouching against the cliff as had been their previous habit ; 

 they were listening to their parents, who were in the water 

 below, swimming restlessly backwards and forwards and call- 



