174 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
This seems a long interval, but is it only when the fish is seen 
carried in the parent’s bill that it is brought to the chick? A 
small fish may lie hidden in the bill, or, again, one might 
be disgorged. I am inclined to think that this is the case, for 
what, otherwise, is the import of these successive journeyings of 
the female bird to and from the loch? In one of them, indeed, 
the time spent away was, perhaps, too short for a fish to have 
been caught—viz. two minutes—but not, presumably, in any of 
the others. Another point presents itself. Since, now, during 
five hours and three-quarters, the two parent birds have never 
once been in my sight, on the water, together, the bird that 
I saw go off, at 1.50, and thought was the male, may have been 
the female after all. If so, then the male has not been here at 
all. But, as I write this, at 5.58, a bird flies in with a long, 
shining fish, and, coming down on the water, just off the point so 
often referred to, the chick at once appears round it, and tears, 
as one may say, over the water for its meal. Having eaten the 
fish, both it and the parent disappear round the point, and very 
shortly afterwards—a matter of seconds—the other parent—for 
it can hardly by possibility be the same—appears just outside 
the bay, at the opposite end of the loch, swimming very placidly, 
and with its head turned towards the point. The same bird 
would hardly have dived the whole length of the loch, and come 
up with its head in the opposite direction to its course under 
water. Ithink, therefore, that this bird bringing in the fish must 
have been the male, and the other the female, who had been 
in the bay all the time—nor had I seen her fly out of it. 
This is the first time, too, that either of the birds, in return- 
ing, has come down off the point, just round which the 
male, but not the female, is accustomed to sit with one of the 
chicks. The bird that appeared off the bay very soon dived, 
probably going back into it, since there was no reappearance. 
Assuming, as I believe to be the case, that it was the male that 
flew off at 1.50, and that came back with a fish at 5.58, then 
there seems a tendency for the duties of the two parents to 
become more distinct, and keep them more apart, each attending 
to, and feeding, one chick. It appears also (studying this pair) 
to he the male only who sits on the bank—at least for any length 
of time—with one of the chicks, but not the other, and who feeds 
