EGGS STOLEN BY GULLS. 
45 
it is very rarely left, and it is only for this one day that the 
collectors have much chance of getting it. They tell you 
that when the bird has once begun sitting, she will never 
suffer herself to be robbed, but that when all chance of 
saving the egg is gone, she rolls it off the ledge and flies 
away. This story is partly true, but there is some doubt 
whether she acts on the true dog-in-the-manger system of 
smashing her egg because no one else shall have it : its 
position is so ticklish, that when the bird is forced to take 
flight to avoid capture, she may very easily upset her 
charge and pitch it over the precipice, in the mere flurry 
attendant on the act of self-preservation. 
Man is not the only robber this poor bird has to fear : 
the gulls and ravens are ever on the alert to secure her 
eggs. This is horrid unkind of neighbours, but perhaps 
not inconsistent with our own practice. The Gulls are 
for ever scanning the face of the cliff, hoping to catch a 
glimpse of an unprotected egg. Directly a gull has found 
one, he charges point blank at its small end, using his 
beak as a lance : the huge egg, thus pierced, sticks on his 
beak, and he flies away as though he was carrying a great 
pear in front of his head ; in this way he sucks out all 
the goodness while on the wing, and drops the shell when 
empty. These shells, with a great hole at one end, may 
hers of young- guillemots, diving and sporting on the sea, quite unable to fly ; 
and I observed others on the ledges of the rocks, as I went down among them, 
in such situations that, had they attempted to fall into the waves beneath, they 
would have been killed by striking against the projecting points of the inter- 
vening sharp and rugged rocks : wherefore I concluded that the information of 
the rock-climbers was to be depended upon ; and I more easily gave credit to it, 
because I myself have seen an old swan sailing on the water with her young 
ones upon her back, about a week after they had been hatched." — Waterton^s 
Essays, \st Series, 159. — E. N. 
