264 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



but was good enough to send it to me for examination, 

 stuffed, on November 17. 



All the specimens above mentioned were immature. 

 To those who have given any attention to British 

 ornithology, it is unnecessary to say that the Puffin 

 is a strictly maritime bird, and that these inland 

 occurrences, though by no means uncommon, are 

 usually due to stress of weather at the seasons of 

 migration ; but our bird is so peculiar in many of its 

 habits, that my readers will perhaps pardon another 

 of my frequent rambles in print beyond the boundaries 

 of our district, with a view of describing the subject 

 of this article in his natural haunts as observed by 

 myself. I have only once visited a colony of Puffins 

 during the period of incubation, and then found the 

 birds sitting, each upon a single egg, in shallow 

 burrows in black peaty earth on the summit and 

 sloping turf-covered gullies and ledges of a small 

 island of no very considerable height, but I have 

 several times seen, from the sea, myriads of Puffins 

 upon and about certain ranges of lofty cliffs in 

 England and in Ireland during the summer months. 

 The number that kept passing around and above us, 

 and dotting the sea in every direction, on some of 

 these occasions was perfectly astounding : the birds 

 seemed to take little notice of us, and had we been 

 so disposed, there would have been no difficulty in 

 loading our boats with them. We were assured by 

 the natives of the neighbourhood of several of these 

 *' Puffinries " that the birds " come up from the sea " 

 annually, almost to a day, in early spring, about the 

 end of March or beginning of April, and begin to lay 

 about the end of the latter month. The young birds 

 are at first covered with black down, and remain in 



