242 
SWIMMERS. 
Spitzbergen, Greenland, Iceland, and the north of Europe, as 
well as the Arctic coast of Asia and Kamtschatka. It likewise 
breeds in some of the Scottish islands, and is generally found 
about saline lakes and the interior seas and gulfs, but is less 
frequent on the borders of the ocean. In autumn these birds 
spread themselves over the banks of rivers and lakes. They 
feed upon fish, fry, and insects, and nest upon the rocks near the 
sea-coast, laying three eggs of an olivaceous white, marked with 
a great number of small dark spots and other grayish ones less 
distinct. In Iceland they inhabit the cliffs of the coast in vast 
numbers, and utter loud and discordant cries, particularly on 
the approach of rapacious birds, as the Sea Eagle, which prob- 
ably prey upon their young. Both their flesh and eggs are 
esteemed as good food. 
The Kittiwake is more strictly a bird of the ocean than Nuttall’s 
remarks imply. In the Far North — in Greenland and along the 
shores of the Arctic Ocean — the nesting site of a colony is usually 
at the head or inland end of a fjord or bay; but in milder latitudes 
the chosen site is a craggy cliff against which the angered waves 
dash with unbroken force. Small colonies are found along our 
coast as far south as the mouth of the Bay of Fundy ; but farther 
north the number of birds nesting in a community is very large. 
At one famous range of cliffs in Norway the number of breeding 
birds has been estimated by a careful naturalist at half a million. 
In the winter these birds visit the New England shores and e.xtend 
their range as far south as Virginia, and at that season a few exam- 
ples visit the Great Lakes. 
Our bird differs but little in its habits from other oceanic Gulls. 
Feeding chiefly on fish, but accepting any diet that drifts within 
range of its keen sight ; drinking salt water in preference to fresh ; 
breasting a gale with ease and grace — soaring in mid-air, skim- 
ming close above the crested waves, or swooping into the trough 
for a coveted morsel ; resting upon the rolling billows and sleeping 
serenely as they roll, with head tucked snugly under a wing ; wan- 
dering in loose flocks and making comrades of other wanderers ; 
devoted to mate and young and attached to all its kin, — wherever 
seen or however employed, the Kittiwake is revealed as a typical 
gleaner of the sea. 
The name is derived from the bird’s singular cry, which resem- 
bles the syllables kiiti-aa kitti-aa. 
