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Updated: June 21, 2025
And it came out, that bird, and went to the side of the cliff and stared down at the kayaks, stretching its body to make it very long. And sitting up there, it said quite clearly: "This, I think, must be that southern man, who has come far from a place in the south to hear a guillemot."
On the southern and western side of the Slieve League promontory there is no real Guillemot station; only on the northern side the quartzite in the vicinity of Tormore are the birds to be found in large numbers.
A man from the south heard one day of a guillemot that could talk. It was said that this bird was to be found somewhere in the north, and therefore he set off to the northward. And toiled along north and north in an umiak. He came to a village, and said to the people there: "I am looking for a guillemot that can talk." "Three days' journey away you will find it."
Why does the Reed-Bunting cling so tenaciously to an acre or more of marshy ground, while the Guillemot rests content with a few square feet on a particular ledge of rock? The answer is the same in both cases to facilitate reproduction. But why should a small bird require so many square yards, whilst a very much larger one is satisfied with so small an area?
"No, no, better go down to the beach and watch the puffins flying over the sea, and the terns fishing about the low lying land. Or you might get a sight of an Arctic skua going north, or a black guillemot with a fish in its mouth flying fast to feed its young. The seaside is the place, laddie! There is something going on there constantly."
What we have then to consider is, What is the biological value to the Guillemot of an inherited nature which, for the Bunting, has utility in relation to the supply of food for the young?
'Says the female smuggler; and then gave up in despair; and watched in a dreamy, tired, half-sad mood, the everlasting sparkle of the water as our bows threw it gently off in sheets of flame and 'tender curving lines of creamy' fire, that ran along the glassy surface, and seemed to awaken the sea for yards round into glittering life, as countless diamonds, and emeralds, and topazes, leaped and ran and dived round us, while we slipped slowly by; and then a speck of light would show far off in the blank darkness, and another, and another, and slide slowly up to us shoals of medusae, every one of them a heaving globe of flame; and some unseen guillemot would give a startled squeak, or a shearwater close above our heads suddenly stopped the yarn, and raised a titter among the men, by his ridiculously articulate, and not over-complimentary, cry; and then a fox's bark from the cliffs came wild and shrill, although so faint and distant; or the lazy gaff gave a sad uneasy creak; and then a soft warm air, laden with heather honey, and fragrant odours of sedge, and birch, and oak, came sighing from the land; while all around us was the dense blank of the night, except where now and then some lonely gleam through the southern clouds showed the cliff-tops on our right.
That it would attain to reproduction is beyond question; that the egg would be safely deposited there can be no manner of doubt; neither is there any reason to suppose that the offspring would not be successfully reared. But, indirectly, its behaviour would affect the Guillemot race.
We met with vast numbers of puffins, cormorants, and sea-gulls, which inhabit the cliffs of the island; and we obtained some good specimens of their eggs. The most curious were those of the guillemot, which, though little larger than the puffin, have eggs as large as those of geese.
Observe, therefore, how far-reaching an effect so small a detail as the nature of the mud can have upon the status of the species in any given locality. Where the conditions are favourable, there the birds must congregate to breed, and, like the Guillemot, if each individual exercised dominion over too large an area, the species as a whole would suffer.
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