358 
BIRD-LIFE. 
day, and on the second only had a few shots where they 
were thickest: the result was comparatively small, for 
I only picked up the dead, as almost all the wounded 
succeeded in reaching the sea, where we lost them. As 
we left the rock the midnight sun stood large and still 
above us, gilding the pinnacles with his rays; and all 
was as silent as with us, at that hour. On this account we 
paid another visit the next morning, to see if the scene 
had altered in appearance; sure enough, the aspect of 
affairs was totally different. The birds had left the sea, 
and were seated in tens, hundreds, and thousands, tier 
above tier, on the rock, which resembled a gigantic nine- 
pin dotted from top to bottom with white specks. These 
were the birds which were not engaged in brooding, and 
thus represented scarce half the population. I fired a 
shot, which created a marvellous effect: hundreds of 
thousands precipitated themselves at once into the ocean 
beneath. They swarmed around us, their cries resembling 
thunder : the Razorbills calling, “ arr, err, querr, queor; ” 
the Puffins, “err,” in a more subdued tone; and the 
Gulls screaming amain. They sat about us in thousands 
and thousands, and encircled us on the wing. When 
they dashed down to the sea the masses were so thick as 
to look like a lean-to roof from the rock to the water, flying 
as they did in one unbroken line. 
We spent the whole day on the island, and thus had an 
opportunity of observing the birds at different stated 
times; for instance, in the morning and afternoon : 
singularly enough at these times they swarmed for one 
hour around the rock in one dense cloud; the reason, 
however, we could not divine. The rest of the day and 
during the night they remained quiet. They often took 
flight without any apparent reason, and then, alighting 
