United States or Mauritius ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Ah! that makes you start don't it? But I have always observed that a mule is apt to remember only the horse side of his ancestry!" Whenever my pretty sister-in-law talks in this way I always try to forget that she came of a family far inferior to our own, the Razorbills.
To the eastward where the cliffs rose higher, guillemots had their home on the ledges of basalt and the wheezy bagpipe-like cry of them came in bursts every now and then as though they were angry about something, whilst the cry of the razorbills and the "get-away, get-away" of the kittiwakes had a sharper note.
The Razorbill is included in Professor Ansted's list, but only marked as occurring in Guernsey. There are two Razorbills in the Museum, one in summer and one in winter plumage. CORMORANT. Phalacrocorax carbo, Linnaeus. French, "Grand cormoran."
"Your Majesty is all right though," he added in a lower voice, "let this be a warning to you for to-morrow! This gentleman is Mr. Razorbill you know the old story of the Razorbills? Ha! ha!" But the King did not laugh; he extended his hand and said gently, "You are welcome my cousin!" Indeed, my sister-in-law would have probably said that dissipated though he was he was the only gentleman there.
The cliff-breeding species Guillemots, Razorbills, and Puffins are difficult to investigate because individuals vary so little, and the sexes resemble one another so closely; yet, despite these difficulties, we can gain some idea of the general purport of their activities.
The adjoining precipice, farther westward, was occupied by guillemots and razorbills, who had deposited their eggs, the former on the naked ledge, the latter in the crevices in the face of the cliff Here the jackdaws appeared quite at their ease, their loud, merry note being heard above every other sound, as they flew in and out of the fissures in the white rock or sate perched on a pinnacle near the summit, and leisurely surveyed the busy crowd below."
At the same time there is much overlapping; the kind of ledge that suits a Razorbill is equally suitable for a Guillemot or a Fulmar, and so, no matter how successful the Razorbill may be in establishing a territory and preventing intrusion upon it by other Razorbills, it will be all to no purpose if it allows itself to be jostled out of its position by a Fulmar.
Vashti's talk was of the birds, for in all Brefar the spot best worth visiting is Merriman's Head, where the birds congregate in their thousands cormorants, curlews, whimbrels, gulls and kittiwakes, oyster-catchers, sandpipers these all the year round and in early summer the razorbills and sea parrots.
And high tide mark was the cliff base in fine weather, in foul, the waves would lash and dash and beat fifty feet up, there was not a guillemot ledge lower than eighty feet, puffins, razorbills and kittiwakes, who always build above the guillemots did not seem to come here at all, keeping to the seaward rocks and the coast line where the cliffs drew further away from the sea.
There was nothing else on the face of the lonely waters except himself and a flock, or fleet, I should say, of razorbills and guillemots, very far away, who alternately showed all white breasts, and vanished as they dived and rose all together like white-faced, disappearing targets, and one gull, who wheeled and wheeled in the middle distance, with one eye on the divers and one on the skua, as if, gull-like, waiting on a chance from either.
Word Of The Day