By permission of the Hon. Walter Rothschild, Tring.
WHITE TERN.
There are two species of white tern, almost restricted to the Southern Hemisphere.
The Razor-bill is nearly, if not quite, as common on the coasts of Britain as the guillemot, from which it may be readily distinguished by its beak, which is much compressed from side to side—hence its name of Razor-bill—and deeply grooved. In habits it very closely resembles the guillemot, but in one respect at least it is a more interesting bird, inasmuch as it is related to and closely resembles the now extinct Great Auk, the giant of the tribe. The smallest British representative, it should be mentioned, is the Little Auk, a species more nearly allied to the guillemot. It is only a winter visitant to Britain, breeding in huge colonies on the inhospitable shores of Greenland and Iceland.
So quaint a bird as the Puffin most certainly finds a place here. One of its most characteristic features is its enormous bill, which is rendered more conspicuous on account of its bright colour. It is bluish at the base, yellow at the tip, and striped with orange. A very remarkable feature of this bill is the fact that it is larger in summer than winter, portions of the sheath being shed in autumn.
Enormous numbers of puffins breed in Ireland; myriads breed on Lundy Island. The Farne Islands, the cliffs of Flamborough, and Scotland are also tenanted by thousands. Puffins breed in holes, which they dig for themselves when occasion requires, but when rabbit-burrows are to be had they prefer these, dispossessing the owners without the slightest compunction. Might, with the puffin, is right, as well as with many other animals.
Young puffins, like young auks and guillemots, are hatched covered with long down. The parents feed them on fish, which they deposit at the mouth of the burrow twenty at a time, and give them to the young bird one by one. When the female is sitting, her mate feeds her in a similar way.
Puffins lay only a single egg, which differs from that of its relatives the Auks and Guillemots in being white. The white colour enables the sitting-bird to see it in the dark burrow.
THE GULL TRIBE.
To get at the real inwardness of the Gull Tribe, so to speak, we must examine their anatomy very closely; then we shall be convinced that they are modified Plovers, and have nothing to do with the Petrels, to which they bear an undoubted resemblance.