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Updated: June 11, 2025
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.
Bureau, in a very interesting paper on this curious change, or rather moult, which takes place in the bill of the Puffin, and which has been translated into the 'Zoologist' for 1878, where a plate showing the changes is given, says that Puffins are cast ashore on the coast of Brittany during the winter, for he says they leave the coast, as I believe they do that of the Channel Islands, and the only indication of their continuing there is that dead birds are rolled on the shore after severe gales in the autumn and winter; and "these birds are clad in a plumage different to that worn by those we get in the breeding-season.
Puffins have beaks like poll parrots, and are about the size of a rook; they have neat white shirt-fronts, and their beaks are red and yellow and blue, but they have silly faces, as if they thought of nothing but their own fine clothes. They live near water on cliffs, and sometimes use an old rabbit burrow for a nest, in which they lay one pure white egg, and one only.
Close to it a few black rocks showed above the water, around which great numbers of gulls, puffins, and other sea-birds disported themselves in clamorous joy; sometimes flying to the shore as if to have a look at the newcomers, and then sheering off with a scream it might be a laugh to tell their comrades what they had seen.
There one outlying peak of granite, carrying up a shelf of slate upon its southern flank, has defied the waves, and formed an island some three miles long, desolate, flat-headed, fretted by every frost and storm, walled all round with four hundred feet of granite cliff, sacred only, then at least, to puffins and pirates.
Our next visit was to Rock Island, the resort of countless numbers of sea-birds. It is at the extreme northern end of the group, and consists of a high table-land, surrounded by precipitous cliffs. As we approached, the gulls rose in masses so thick as positively to darken the air, while all around the sea was speckled with the white feathers of innumerable puffins.
The puffins alone were calm, swimming in coveys on the glassy water and leaving long ripples in their wake. The sun sank, broadened out and banded with mist beyond the Lizard Point, and before his upper limb had been swallowed by the rocks the business began with a blow from the hills.
If I hadn't her to think of I might go mad in time." "I've brought you a rabbit I snared. Nance cooked it." "That was good of her. Can you eat puffins' eggs?" "They want a bit of getting used to," laughed the boy. "But they're better cooked than raw." "I can cook them. I found part of an old boat, and I've plugged up all the holes in the shelter, and I only light a fire at night.
"She has the courage for that or for anything," said he. "And then, you know, she would be greatly interested in the clouds of puffins and the skarts behind Staffa, and we would take her to the great caves in the cliffs at Gribun; and I have no doubt she would like to go out to one of the uninhabited islands." Lady Macleod had preserved a stern silence.
The funny little puffins, with their red, parrot-like bills, were peering anxiously out of the crevices; while the curious little auks, standing erect in rows like black and white mannikins, were exceedingly perturbed; and the kittiwakes flew screaming from the rocky shelves, joining their voices to the hoarser cries of the guillemots and the booming of the waves among walls and pillars of rock.
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