WAPITAGUN 



way for us, walking or running along erect 

 with legs apart in a comical manner, as they 

 waved their short, paddlelike wings to aid 

 them in balancing. They reminded me at 

 once of moving pictures I had seen of Ant- 

 arctic penguins. In their anxiety and nervous- 

 ness they frequently fell over the cormorants* 

 nests and sadly stained their white shirt- 

 fronts in the mire, and often, in their attempts 

 to rise on the wing, they would sprawl head- 

 foremost down the rocks. Occasionally we 

 would see one try to arrange an egg against 

 the bare incubating space in the middle of the 

 belly. How each knows its own egg is a puzzle. 

 During all this time they were as silent as the 

 adult cormorants, but the young cormorants 

 made noise enough for all. 



A considerable proportion of the murres 

 had narrow white eye-rings and white lines 

 leading back from the eyes. This bird is known 

 as the bridled or ringed murre, but is not 

 given rank as a separate species, although it 

 may deserve it. The fact that the common 

 murre and the ringed one breed in the same 

 colonies and that birds of both kinds have 

 been found breeding together does not vitiate 

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