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On the islands off the Maine coast the principal birds safeguarded by this means are the Herring Gull, Arctic Tern, Wilson's Tern, Leach's Petrel, Black Guillemot, and Puffin. There are protected colonies of Terns on Long Island; of Terns and Laughing Gulls on the New Jersey coast; of Black Skimmers, and of various Terns, in Virginia and North Carolina.
We are justified in thinking that this must be so because in many directions we can not only observe differences in the size of the area occupied, but can recognise a close correspondence between those differences and the conditions of life of the species. Thus the Herring-Gull occupies a comparatively small area, though one which is many times larger than that of the Guillemot.
They come not down to mix with the currents of human life in the streets and open spaces; they fly away to the country to feed, and dwell on the cathedral above the houses and people just as sea-birds kittiwake and guillemot and gannet dwell on the ledges of some vast ocean-fronting cliff.
It requires more space because it not only builds a nest but rears four instead of a single offspring, and it can be allowed more space because the young remain in the nest until they are capable of sustained flight, and consequently it can make use of many miles of cliff from which the tide recedes at the base, and which on this account are denied to the Guillemot, but manifestly it cannot be allowed so much space as the Bunting, for then comparatively few individuals would attain to reproduction.
Hunger stimulates the Warbler to search the surrounding trees, and so to extend its area; but hunger takes the Guillemot down to the water, and hence the area which it primarily occupied remains unmodified. To sum up: the territory is useful in various ways, but not necessarily in the same way for every species.
Many an hour have I sat up yonder, listening to the noises of earth and the noises of heaven, while the shrill note of the gull, the chatter of the guillemot, the heron's bitter scream, the hoarse croaking of the cormorant, have been all around me: and, indeed, the birds know me well enough. There's a pair of old gulls " "Robin!
The falcon flying down the windy sky, The swallow poised and darting in the sun, The guillemot beating seaward through the mist We knew them every one, And heard from them of trumpets wakening war, Of steadfast beams that roofed our people warm, Of ships that blindfold through uncharted seas Triumphant rode the storm.
Isolation is then the first step in the process of reproduction, and any individual that fails to make it good, fails to procreate its kind. But isolation implies separation, and the degree of separation varies in different species, from the few square feet of cliff required by the Guillemot to the few square miles of barren moor over which the Peregrine exercises dominion.
I then went to see Rochefort. He lives at 80, Rue Judaique. He is convalescent from an attack of erysipelas that at one time assumed a dangerous character. With him I found MM. Alexis Bouvier and Mourot, whom I invited to dinner to-day, at the same time asking them to transmit my invitation to MM. Claretie, Guillemot and Germain Casse, with whom I want to shake hands before I go.
On the ledges, too, can be seen rows of little whitebreasted puffins; razor-bills are perched here and there, as well as countless guillemots. The ringed or bridled guillemot also breeds on the cliffs, and a number of other types of northern sea-birds are periodically noticed along these inaccessible Bempton Cliffs. The guillemot makes no nest, merely laying a single egg on a ledge.
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