Wanderings of a Naturalist 



young of both razorbill and guillemot leave their nesting- 

 ledges for the water at the age of about ten days— that is, 

 many weeks before they are able to fly. They must, there- 

 fore, fall from the ledges to the sea, or be carried by their, 

 parents, and stand a very good chance of being killed on 

 some projecting point of the rock, or, even if they reach the 

 water alive, of being crushed against. the cliff-foot by the 

 rush of the waves. One could see, floating at the base of 

 the cliffs, the small bodies of several unfortunate chicks which 

 had come to an untimely end, and there seemed to be a great 

 number of the birds still clustering on the ledges which had 

 neither eggs nor young, and which had probably lost the 

 latter. Undoubtedly wild weather must very largely in- 

 crease the mortality of the chicks, but it would seem as 

 though, even under the most favourable circumstances, this 

 must be considerable. That the season was a late one was 

 shown by the fact that both razorbills and guillemots were 

 in a few cases still brooding their eggs. 



Climbing the hill of Hecla on Mingulay, and nearing 

 the summit, one sees sailing in the clear air above, and a 

 little ahead of one, unlooked-for birds, whose soaring powers 

 are quite good, and which one is at first at a loss to identify, 

 when seen above a hillside with no sea apparently near. 

 These are razorbills, hovering and wheeling about and above 

 their nesting ledges on the north face of the hill, and it is 

 only on reaching the watershed that one realizes how sheer 

 the hill drops to the sea on that side. In flight, as in intelli- 

 gence, the razorbill is far superior to the guillemot. He 

 delights in soaring in the teeth of a stiff breeze or following 

 his mate with slow wing beats — quite unlike his usual rapid 

 flight — above the gully where is his nesting site. The 

 guillemot rarely soars, rarely even flies backward and for- 

 ward above the nesting-ledge. 



The guillemots— perhaps because they nest in such 

 densely crowded colonies— are more quarrelsome than the 

 razorbills, and their harsh and angry shrieks can almost con- 



I02 



