FULMAR. 
157 
completely in the air, as if on a pivot. But the Fulmars m the 
air are soon left to themselves, and all attention directed to 
those sitting quietly on their nests. In some prts of the 
cliffs, where the soil is loose and turf-grown, the ground is 
almost white with sitting Fulmars. Every available spot is a 
Fulmar nest ; and as you explore the cliffs, large numbers of 
birds fly out from all directions where they had not previously 
been noticed. The' Fulmar begins to lay about the middle of 
May and I was told that the young are able to fly in July, it 
very rarely burrows deep enough in the ground to conceal 
itself whilst incubating, and, in the majority of cases only 
makes a hole large enough to half conceal itself, whilst in a 
great many instances it is content to lay its eggs under some 
projecting tuft, or even on the bare and exposed ledge of a 
cliff in a similar place to that so often selected by the 
Guillemot. I imagine that the bird makes a small excavation 
wherever it can j but there are not suitable places for all, and 
great numbers have to breed in unfavourable positions. 
Nest. — Mr. Robert Read sends me the following note : 
“ The Fulmar breeds in vast numbers in S. Rilda, where they 
usually lay their single white egg in hollows scraped out of the 
grassy turf covering the rocky terraces along the cliffs. Many, 
however, lay on the bare rocky ledges, where the egg is usually 
placed in a slight hollow or under a projecting piece of rock. 
In Tune, 1888, I got along one of the narrow ledges to where 
a Fulmar was sitting, and at length managed to reimh it wit 
my stick. The bird would not stir for some time, but at last 
it ejected a stream of oil at the stick, and then flew of, 
leaving a single egg which I found, on blowing it, to be about 
a week or ten days incubated.” 
Eggs.— One. Chalky-white and rough in texture. Axis, 
2’75-3'o5 inches; diam., i' 75 ” 2 'i. 
THE PIED FULMARS. GENUS DAPTION. 
DapHon, Stephens in Shaw’s Gen. Zool. xiii. p. 239 (1826). 
Type, D. capensis (Linn.). 
As in the true Fulmars the tail-feathers are fourteen in 
number in the genus Daption, but the bill is more slender, and 
