50 A NATURALIST ON DESERT ISLANDS. 



for a few days and then pass on their way either north or 

 south, according to the season. 



Those which remain for the whole winter are there, 

 we might ahnost say, on sufferance. They are foreigners 

 making use of a comfortable wintering place. Take for 

 instance a little flock of tumstones, which we came across 

 one day along the rocky cHffs bounding the little ba^' , 

 used in old times by the buccaneers. These little birds 

 were so tame that they alloAved us to approach them 

 within a few feet. There was a high Trade-wind blowing 

 at the time, and the}' seemed to be sheltering among the 

 medley of huge coral boulders littered along this windward 

 shore. It was only when we rudely intruded upon 

 their privacy that the}^ flew on a few 3 ards. In the act of 

 settling again, their white under-parts became for a 

 moment visible, and then, instantly, the birds remained 

 motionless, and as if by magic seemed to disappear under 

 one's very eyes — plumage and rock becoming blended into 

 one homogeneous and undefinable blotch of vague 

 colouring. 



No wonder they were tame, although all unconsciously 

 they were demonstrating the efficacy of protective 

 colouration. In the whole course of their winter stay in 

 Swan Island they would hardty set eyes on a human soul. 

 Perhaps we were the only humans who had troubled to 

 scramble along this rock-stream shore — ^their chosen 

 abiding place — ^that winter. And where had they come 

 from ? On what far-distant northern shore did they 

 make their shallow meagrely lined nests, among the scanty 

 herbage ? Why, thousands of miles north in Arctic 

 regions, desolate, wild and uninhabited ; perhaps some- 

 where along the shores of Hudson's Bay, in Smith's 

 Sound to the north of Baffin's Bay, or on the western 

 shores of northern Greenland. And here their j^oung 

 would first set eyes on the world, but never or hardly ever 

 on a human being. As the summer daj^s begin to shorten 

 in these northern regions, and the cold nights make scarce 

 the food these birds find under the stones along the bleak 



