THE PUFFIN 295 



Rotche. It is an indefatigable swimmer, and has considerable 

 powers of flight ; but it does not possess the faculty of diving to the 

 same degree as the Divers and Grebes, as it generally stays but a 

 short time under water. Hence it must find its food near the surface ; 

 and this is supposed to consist of the small crustaceous animals which 

 are so abundant in the Arctic waters. Little Auks are eminently 

 social birds, and have been observed occasionally in such numbers on 

 the water and floating masses of ice as almost to hide their resting- 

 place. They rarely travel far south ; and when they visit our 

 shores, which is in winter, and after tempestuous weather, they are 

 supposed to have been driven hither against their wiU. Instances 

 are recorded of specimens having been found far inland, disabled 

 or dead. It lays only a single egg. 



THE PUFFIN 



FRATERCULA ARCTICA 



Crown, collar, and upper parts, black ; cheeks, region of the eyes, and throat, 

 greyish white ; under parts pure white ; bill bluish grey at the base, 

 yellow in the middle, bright red at the tip ; upper mandible with three 

 transverse furrows, lower, with two ; iris whitish ; orbits red ; feet 

 orange-red. Length twelve and a half inches. Eggs whitish, with 

 indistinct ash-coloured spots. 



Unlike the majority of sea-birds which have been passing under 

 our notice. Puffins visit the shores of the British Isles in summer, 

 and even in winter they are not absent. They make their appear- 

 ance about April or May, not scattering themselves indiscriminately 

 along the coast, but resorting in vast numbers to various selected 

 breeding-places, from the SciUy Islands to the Orkneys. Their 

 home being the sea, and their diet small fish, they possess the 

 faculties of swimming and diving to a degree of perfection. They 

 have, moreover, considerable powers of flight ; but on land their 

 gait is only a shuffling attempt at progress. Their vocation on 

 shore is, however, but a temporary one, and requires no great amount 

 of locomotion. Soon after their arrival they set to work about 

 their nests. Fanciful people who class birds according to their 

 constructive faculty as weavers, basket-makers, plasterers, and so on, 

 would rank Puffins among miners. Building is an art of which 

 they are wholly ignorant, yet few birds are lodged more securely. 

 With their strong beaks, they excavate for themselves holes in the 

 face of the cliff to the depth of about three feet, and at the extremity 

 the female lays a solitary egg — solitary, that is to say, unless another 

 bird takes shelter in the same hole, which is not unfrequently the 

 case. Puffins generally show no overweening partiality for their 

 own workmanship ; sloping cliffs which have been perforated by 

 rabbits are favourite places of resort ; and here they do not at all 

 scruple to avail themselves of another's labour, or, if necessary, 

 to eject by force of beak the lawful tenant. If the soil be unsuited 



