BIRD ROCK 171 



So unusual and pleasing was this experience of hav- 

 ing birds admit me at once to the inner circles of 

 their society that I felt as though I had indeed been 

 initiated into their ranks ; and my enjoyment of the 

 strange scene was heightened tenfold by the knowl- 

 edge that I could satisfactorily record it. So I pre- 

 pared the twin-lens — a camera exactly adapted to my 

 present needs — and at a distance of twenty feet or 

 thereabouts loaded and fired as many times as I 

 pleased, with the birds none the wiser, and offering 

 me each moment some new picture differing in com- 

 position from the last. Here was a triumph for the 

 bird photographer. Who so nearly could have done 

 justice to the subject ? The taxidermist ? One shot 

 would have broken the spell ? The artist ? Whose 

 pencil could compete with tlie lens in the convin- 

 cing realism of its impression ? 



But as yet I had seen only a fragment of the 

 Rock. Climbing, therefore, from ledge to ledge, I 

 reached a corner where an abrupt turn exposed a 

 great expanse of perpendicular wall so inaccessible 

 to man that it had become a favorite nesting site for 

 the birds.'^ Here were gathered Gannets, Murres, 

 Razorbills, and Kittiwakes, distributed singly or in 

 rows, according to the nature of the shelves or ledges 

 on which they were nesting, the Gannets taking the 

 widest, the Murre^ and Kittiwakes the narrowest 

 ledges, while the Razorbills sought the more shel- 

 tered crevices. 



What noise and seeming confusion were here! 

 A never-ceasing chorus in which the loud, grating 

 gor-r r-rok, gor-r-r roh of the Gannets predominated, 

 while the singularly human call of the Murres and 



