THE PUFFIN. 
309 
THE PUEEIN. 
Fratcrcula arctica. 
TAMMY NOKIE. 
It is generally believed in the island of Unst that the PulFins 
have an almost preternatural faculty for timing their move- 
ments according to the calendar, the whole body of them de- 
parting on a given day in each year with the regularity of 
clock-work. Without going quite so far as this, I cannot but 
admit that the birds do leave with most notable punctuality, 
the 23d of August being alnuost always the marked day of the 
migration. Thomas Edmondston also gives this date, saying 
that the Puffin generally arrives about the 1st of April, and 
departs constantly on the 23d of August. It need scarcely be 
remarked that a few stragglers are left to bring up the rear. 
A flock may now and then be seen as late as the first week in 
September, but such an occurrence is very unusual, and it is 
very rarely indeed that a Puffin is seen with us in the winter. As 
a rule, the birds arrive in tlie last week in March, and begin 
laying about the third week in May, this being perhaps a little 
early, on the average.. 
My first opportunity of forming intimate acquaintance with 
the nesting habits was gained in the course of a memorable day's 
scramble among, the cliffs at Hermaness, in company with one 
of the best of the professed cragsmen of Shetland,, one fine day 
in June 1861. To get well up to the slopes on which the 
Puffins were breeding it was necessary to make a. long circuit, 
passing the Guillemot ranges, and very sufficiently did my heart 
misgive me, on looking at these latter from the brow of the 
cliff, but my guide assured me that if I had head enough he 
would take me by a 'Amd” which a child might travel.* 
* In Shetland there were no roads, in our sense of the word, until the year 
1847, when the Relief Committee, in that sad season of distress and famine, 
caused to be constructed the tracks which were long known as “destitution” 
roads, a term only too well known in the Scotch Highlands also in those days.- 
As used by a Shetlander, the term merely indicated a practicable way. I was 
once shown a “ road ” to the summit ^f Leara Skerry, in the west, some ninety 
