158 BULLETIN 107, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
from the house; consequently the birds are tamer and more friendly 
than I have ever seen them elsewhere. After considerable hard work, 
crawling over, under, and around the piled-up bowlders, sometimes 
almost standing on our heads, we succeeded in finding about half a 
dozen nests, aided by the droppings and feathers in the pathways 
leading to them; by rolling away some of the smaller rocks we were 
able to photograph the eggs on their crude beds of small stones or 
on the bare rocks. There were two eggs in each nest and apparently 
few, if any, young had yet hatched. Most of the birds were very 
tame, sitting quietly on their egg while we were at work, until fully 
exposed to view, when they would craw] away out of sight; but some- 
times they scrambled out under our feet and flew out to sea. I spent 
an interesting afternoon, partially hidden among the rocks, watching 
and photographing them. They all flew off into the water and swam 
away at first, but I concealed myself near one of their favorite roost- 
ing rocks, where they were accustomed to sit and sun themselves, and 
waited patiently for their return. There was quite a flock of them 
on the water just beyond the breakers, where I could plainly see them 
swimming about, dipping their bills into the water occasionally, div- 
ing, preening their feathers, or rising at intervals to shake the water 
from their wings. As their confidence returned they worked in 
gradually toward the rocks, riding buoyantly over the breakers or 
diving through them, until one venturesome fellow flew up on to a 
rock only 15 feet away and stared at me. His soft, shrill whistle gave 
assurance to his companions that I was harmless and one by one they 
flew up to join him until I had four of them just where I wanted to 
photograph them. One or two settled down to rest in a sitting 
posture; others walked about in a semierect attitude, their little red 
legs being just long enough to keep their spiny tails clear of the rock; 
others were more restless, coming and going all the time, with their 
feet widespread in flight and held straight out behind. It was an 
unusually good opportunity to photograph this species and I regret 
exceedingly that nearly all of the plates were lost in some unaccount- 
able way. 
Although the above-described nesting sites may be considered as 
typical of the species or as generally preferred by it, the black 
guillemot often nests in entirely different situations. Audubon 
(1840) describes a perilous attempt of one of the sailors to secure 
the eggs of this bird by swinging on a long rope over the face of a 
rocky cliff, several hundred feet above the sea, in the Magdalen 
Islands, and I have seen them there myself nesting in the fissures, 
deep crevices, and caves of the soft red sandstone cliffs, where their 
nests were practically inaccessible. On the south coast of Labra- 
dor we found a few pairs breeding on Esquimo Island, where we 
saw them flying into and out of crevices in the perpendicular cliffs 
