Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
Here you have the dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which continually caress each other; the egoist she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade; and, by her side, another female who adopts any one's orphans, and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed.
Scarcity of suitable cliffs is the principal reason of the ledges being so closely packed with Guillemots, just as it accounts for this part of the precipice being crowded with Kittiwake Gulls, that part with Herring-Gulls, and that part again with Razorbills and Puffins.
If she were lying dead would not the guillemots pass her without enmity and the penguins without friendliness, as indifferent to her fate as the wave of the sea on the blowing wind? They would as indifferent as the great islands standing out there in the distance, mauve and slate grey against the morning.
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.
We saw here a great number of young black guillemots, and a flock of ducks, which we supposed to be of the eider species.
Herr Mack regained his composure; a curious confidence appeared in his manner, and he answered: "You are mistaken: I came on purpose to find you. I wish to point out to you that from the 1st of April it is forbidden to fire a shot within half a mile of the bird-cliffs. You shot two birds out at the island to-day; you were seen doing so." "I shot two guillemots," I said helplessly.
Already the sea for miles along the shore was frozen. The open water lay at so great a distance from the land that the sound of the waves was stilled. The birds had disappeared. Even the voices of the sinister black guillemots and ravens were heard no more. Annadoah's sobs rose softly over the ice. "Spirit of my mother, thou who wast carried by the storm-winds into the sea! Hear me!
Great masses of marrots and guillemots rocked on the foam.
That was the first and greatest consideration, and with that firm in his mind Stair kept himself steady till the sun was descending low in the sky of the west, and the clamorous birds began to flock back to the island sand-pipers peeping in the hollows about the sheep-fold, gulls and guillemots squabbling on the cliffs, and tarns restlessly dashing and swooping.
"Oh, I'll go out if you like," Eyre said, "but I shall take very good care to run in before the squall comes, if there's any about. I don't think there will be, after all. I fancied I saw a flash of lightning about half an hour ago down in the south, but nothing has come of it. There are some curlew about, and the guillemots are in thousands.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking