British Birds in Their Haunts

by C. A. Johns

Crown, collar, and upper parts, black; cheeks, region of the eyes, and throat, greyish white; under parts pure white; bill bluish grey at the base, yellow in the middle, bright red at the tip; upper mandible with three transverse furrows, lower, with two; iris whitish; orbits red; feet orange-red. Length twelve and a half inches. Eggs whitish, with indistinct ash-coloured spots.

Unlike the majority of sea-birds which have been passing under our notice, Puffins visit the shores of the British Isles in summer, and even in winter they are not absent. They make their appearance about April or May, not scattering themselves indiscriminately along the coast, but resorting in vast numbers to various selected breeding-places, from the Scilly Islands to the Orkneys. Their home being the sea, and their diet small fish, they possess the faculties of swimming and diving to a degree of perfection. They have, moreover, considerable powers of flight; but on land their gait is only a shuffling attempt at progress. Their vocation on shore is, however, but a temporary one, and requires no great amount of locomotion. Soon after their arrival they set to work about their nests. Fanciful people who class birds according to their constructive faculty as weavers, basket-makers, plasterers, and so on, would rank Puffins among miners. Building is an art of which they are wholly ignorant, yet few birds are lodged more securely. With their strong beaks, they excavate for themselves holes in the face of the cliff to the depth of about three feet, and at the extremity the female lays a solitary egg—solitary, that is to say, unless another bird takes shelter in the same hole, which is not unfrequently the case. Puffins generally show no overweening partiality for their own workmanship; sloping cliffs which have been perforated by rabbits are favourite places of resort; and here they do not at all scruple to avail themselves of another's labour, or, if necessary, to eject by force of beak the lawful tenant. If the soil be unsuited for boring, they lay their eggs under large stones or in crevices in the rock. The old bird sits most assiduously, and suffers herself to be taken rather than desert her charge, but not without wounding, with her powerful beak, and to the best of her ability, the hand which ventures into her stronghold. Myriads burrow on Lundy Island. Lunde means Puffin, and ey Island, the name being given by the old Scandinavian rovers who settled there.

The young are fed by both parents, at first on half-digested fish, and when older on pieces of fresh fish. At this period they suffer their colonies to be invaded without showing much alarm, and are either shot, knocked down with a stick, or noosed without difficulty. As soon as the young are fully fledged, all the Puffins withdraw to southern seas, where they pass the winter, and do not approach land until the return of the breeding season. "A small island near Skye, named Fladda-huna, is a great breeding haunt of Puffins, a species which arrives in the earlier part of May, literally covering the rocks and ledgy cliffs with its feathered thousands. Although these have no concern with our Grouse-shooting season, they almost totally disappear on the twelfth of August."[56] It was just about this period (August 7) in the present year (1861) that I observed several large flocks of Puffins, floating with the tide through the Sound of Islay, and was told by an intelligent gamekeeper that "these birds habitually swim through the sound at this season, but always fly when returning". The reason probably is that the young are not at the former period sufficiently fledged to undertake a long flight, though they find no difficulty in swimming. By spring they have attained their full strength, and are able to adopt the more rapid mode of progress. In Scotland there are many large colonies, also in the cliffs by Flamborough Head, and on the Farne Islands.

Puffins and some other sea-birds appear to be either liable to a fatal epidemic or to be surprised by some atmospheric disturbance, being unable to resist which, they perish in large numbers. I have seen a portion of the sea-shore in Cornwall strewed for the distance of more than a mile with hundreds of their remains. All the softer parts had been apparently devoured by fishes and crustaceous animals, and nothing was left but the unmistakable parrot-like beaks. A friend informs me that he witnessed a similar phenomenon in Norfolk, in September, 1858; but in this instance the carcases of the birds were not devoured, and the birds were of different kinds. He estimated that about ninety per cent. were Guillemots, and the remainder Puffins, Razor-bills, Scoters, and a sprinkling of Black Throated Divers. A similar mortality among sea-birds is recorded in the Zoologist as having taken place on the coast of Norfolk, in May, 1856. On this occasion they were so numerous as to be thought worth collecting for manure.

Other names by which the Puffin is known are Sea Parrot, Coulterneb, Mullet, Bottlenose; and, in Scotland, Ailsa Parrot, Tammie-Norie, and Tammas.

[56] Wilson's Voyage round the Coast of Scotland.

FAMILY COLYMBIDÆ

THE GREAT NORTHERN DIVER
COLYMBUS GLACIÁLIS

Bill, with the upper mandible, nearly straight, upwards of four inches in length; head and neck violet-black, with a double gorget white, barred with black; upper parts black, spotted with white; under parts white; bill black; irides brown; feet dusky, the membranes whitish. Young very like the next, but distinguishable by their superior size and the direction of the bill. Length thirty-three inches. Eggs dark olive-brown, with a few spots of purplish brown.