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 the 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 Murres 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 7-rok, gor-r-r rok of the Gannets predominated, 
while the singularly human call of the Murres and 
