10 The Bird Life of an Outer Island. [Sess. 



vantage might look down on the perpetual wonder and prodi- 

 gality of a rock-fowl city. For sheer impressiveness you were 

 perhaps wise to choose a stance as far down as you could reach 

 in one of the great chasms which the ceaseless grind of the 

 tide and the stress of Atlantic weather had gnawed into the 

 very vitals of the island. There you might feel that you were 

 in the very heart of the cliff world and entirely out of your 

 own ; on either side of you the towering precipices thronged 

 by myriads of nesting sea-fowl, the space between filled with 

 their rapidly moving forms, and from it all arising the in- 

 describable clamour, the weird wails of Kittiwakes, the uncouth 

 " gurring " and grunting of Gruillemots and Eazorbills, the whirr 

 of innumerable wings, and the thunderous undertone of the 

 pent ocean 200 or 300 feet beneath. 



One might have thought that Nature had designed the 

 nesting habits of her sea-children so that every part of the 

 cliff should be utilised. On the upper shelving ledges, as I 

 have told you, were the big gulls, on every other ledge of im- 

 portance were Guillemots. On the cracks and ledges which 

 were uncomfortably small for the Guillemots were the nests 

 of the J^ittiwake gull. The smaller nooks and crannies and 

 corners left vacant by Guillemots were occupied by Eazor- 

 bills ; the large open crevices and fissures held the unsavoury 

 domicile of the Shag, while every slope of turf above the cliff 

 or midway: down was honeycombed by the excavations of the 

 quaintest, funniest bird of them all — the Puffin. Puffins 

 met you everywhere, arrayed on the edge of every rock, 

 dotting the green slopes, floating out to sea, crowding the air, 

 passing continuously from the land to the sea and from the 

 sea to the land, compelling one to marvel at the abundance of 

 life. Although the Puffin impressed you with his ubiquity, 

 the predominant partner, so to speak, on the cliffs was un- 

 doubtedly the Guillemot. Every fault and irregularity of the 

 cliff face was occupied by serried rows of black and white ; on 

 the broader ledges were shuffling, jostling crowds, from which 

 every few minutes an unfortunate bird was ejected by the 

 pressure of his comrades, and to which every few minutes an 

 ejected bird returned, dropping down in the middle of the 

 bustling company, to the loudly-expressed wrath and indigna- 

 tion of its members as a body and the inevitable discomfiture 



