The Tufted Puffin 



Taken on the S. E. Farallon 



A SHARP TURN 



Photo by the Author 



We do not know. But we 

 do know that the Puffin's 

 bill is wonderfully contrived 

 of some eighteen plates (with 

 underlying membranes), and 

 that of these, sixteen, in- 

 cluding "rosettes, lamellae and 

 selvedges," but chiefly the 

 olive-green basal plates, are 

 deciduous, — they fall away, 

 that is, at the end of the 

 breeding season. Their place 

 is taken partly by underlying 

 feathered tracts, and partly 

 by an underlying horny plate 

 of a deep brown color; and 

 the basal dimensions of the 

 bill are much reduced. Accompanying these changes is a disappearance 

 of the white facial mask with its plumes, and the entire head becomes a 

 uniform blackish color. The vermilion eyelids fade to a sickly salmon- 

 color; and the irides, if we may trust scanty observation, become pale 

 bluish. 



A forty-five-degree slope of soil is the characteristic nesting-site of 

 the Tufted Puffin. Here tunnels are driven at random to a depth of three 

 or four feet, and so close together that once, on Erin, one of the Olym- 

 piades, by placing a foot in the entrance of a burrow and "fetching a com- 

 pass," I was able to touch with the hands the entrances of twenty-five 

 others, apparently occupied. This may have been an unusually populous 

 section, but, if we reckoned at half that rate, an acre of ground would 

 carry 2,700 burrows. Hard or rocky soil is not shunned in prosperous 

 colonies, but many efforts here are baffled outright, and "prospects" 

 are at least as numerous as occupied burrows. Elsewhere the top soil 

 on precipitous clinging ledges may be utilized, or else crannies, and rock- 

 hewn chambers. Upon the Farallon Islands, these birds have little oppor- 

 tunity for digging in the earth, and little necessity for providing fresh 

 burrows, for crevices and cubby-holes abound. These are, for the most 

 part, of an ample and substantial character, as though well maintained, 

 and most of them have, doubtless, seen use measured by cycles rather than 

 by generations. Many eggs, and sitting birds as well, are visible from the 

 outside; while some of the nesting-sites are nothing more than the inner- 

 most recesses of niches and caves occupied by the Murres. On the Faral- 

 lons, also, there is a fierce, albeit silent, competition between these silent 



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