Long grass and dense thickets, as of salal, salmon-berry bushes, 

 or dwarf spruce, occasionally afford refuge to birds hard-pressed for 

 room. Here the puffin, starting from some exposed edge, drives a 

 tunnel through the matted vegetation and deposits its egg upon the 

 surface of the ground, in shade almost as intense as that afforded 

 by a roof of earth. 



If a hillside colony is approached suddenly from shore, the stand- 

 ing population, presumably males, pitches downward to sea by a 

 common impulse; while the nest-occupants come out by twos and 

 threes and dozens as one walks across the earth honeycombed with 

 their burrows. Once a-wing, the puffin returns again and again to 

 satisfy his curiosity by flying in great circles out and back, or perhaps 

 around the nesting-islet, if it be a small one. There is something 

 very weird and funereal about the whole performance ! 



Later the puffins settle upon the surface of the water until the 

 sea is black with them. Each bird dives, if only for a moment, upon 

 the instant of alighting; and it may be that they find it difficult not 

 to do so. Rising also requires an effort, desperate if the sea is smooth, 

 but easier in proportion to the increasing strength of the wind. As 

 soon as the invader has left the nesting-colony or secreted himself 

 the puffins return rapidly to reclaim the cooling egg, or to take up 

 the sober vigil at the burrow's mouth. Each alights with uplifted 

 wings held well back; the wings are also lifted from time to time 

 as if to rest them, and they are spread as balancers whenever 

 the bird attempts to walk. Be the going ever so easy, the puffin shifts 

 about as gingerly as a slack-wire performer. 



Only one egg is laid, dull white, with faint irregular lines of 

 brown and purplish. Because the nest-lining is usually of the scantiest, 

 only a few salal leaves or bits of grass, the egg is often so soiled by 

 contact with the earth as to pass for dingy brown. 



The baby puffin is your true Puffin, and it is undoubtedly he who 

 gave this trivial name to the group. He is, indeed, a mere puff-ball, 

 for he is densely covered at birth with down at least an inch long, 

 and you could blow him away (Pouf!) if he were not so fat, and 

 anchored in a hole. The down is of a uniform dull slaty black, and 

 the only touch of color about this infant pin-cushion is a showing of 

 dull red near the middle of the otherwise black bill. 



The tufted puffin enjoys the widest breeding-range of any bird in 

 the North Pacific, except the pigeon guillemot; and, although not so 

 thoroughly distributed as that species, it is undoubtedly far more 



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