1907-1908.] The Bird Life of an Outer Island. 7 



food-supplies, which would have been absent earlier in the 

 year, sufficiently abundant to persuade them to remain there 

 until some other and more powerful instinct supervenes to 

 direct their course elsewhere. We might have ventured this 

 theory, I say, did we not have Mr Seebohm to tell us that the 

 food of the Purple Sandpiper consists of marine insects, small 

 crustaceans and molluscs, and the seeds of several shore plants, 

 but which of these it was to get on that barren surface where 

 we saw them, it baffled us to know. With that stultified 

 theory, in fact, we have in the meantime let, or tried to let, the 

 matter rest, but perhaps the wits and observations of some 

 of the members of this Society may be able to assist in its 

 elucidation. 



On the wide stretches of bare rock which approached the 

 summits of some of the lower cliffs there were several pairs 

 of Oyster-catchers. The elevation was sometimes 100 and 

 sometimes even 200 feet, and in view of the Oyster-catcher's 

 addiction to sea-level and river-level on the mainland and 

 on other islands, where we have taken upon ourselves the 

 protracted pleasure of searching for their nests, we thought 

 their liking for nesting quarters at this altitude rather strange, 

 although, judging from the difficulty we experienced in finding 

 their nests, the ground was evidently quite as well adapted 

 to their purpose as foreshore or river shingle. We did 

 succeed in finding several nests with eggs, but we inferred 

 from the behaviour of most of the pairs that we disturbed 

 that their young were hatched. When a pair of Oyster- 

 catchers have young, they create the most distracting din 

 imaginable, and we frequently abandoned the search for the 

 progeny — a search which, after all, is only comparable with 

 the proverbial one of looking for a needle in a haystack — 

 out of sheer inability to endure the torment of sound which 

 assailed us right and left and overhead as we rummaged 

 among the likely nooks and crannies of the rock. Beyond 

 the Oyster- catcher's territory was the domain of the big gulls 

 — the Herring and the Lesser Black - backs ; in fact their 

 respective spheres of influence encroached upon one another, 

 and the clamorous cloud of swirling gulls, which even 

 encanopied the intruder, was invariably " threaded " by the 

 high-pitched, piercing notes of a " sea - pie." The Herring 



