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Updated: June 11, 2025
The struggle for reproduction is nowhere more severe than amongst the cliff-breeding sea birds; it is not for nothing that one sees Kittiwake Gulls, locked together, fall into the water hundreds of feet below and struggle to the point of exhaustion, or, as has been reported, to the point of death; it is not for nothing that Puffins fight with such desperation.
After the breeding-season the Puffins seem to leave the Channel Islands for the winter, as they do at Lundy Island and in the British Channel; they may return occasionally, as they do in the Bristol Channel, for a short time in foggy weather; but I have never seen a Puffin in any of my passages in October and November, or in any boating expedition at that time of year, and I have never heard any of the boatmen talk about Barbelotes being seen about in the winter.
The soil was perforated with holes which at first he ascribed to rabbits, but when he inserted his hand into one he got such a nip from an unusually strong beak that he changed his mind to puffins, and, standing quite still for a time, he presently saw the members of the colony come creeping out behind their great red bills and scurry off across the water in search of breakfast.
A short time after the flights of birds became more and more numerous. Petrels, puffins, and mates, inhabitants of those desolate quarters, signalled the approach of Greenland. The Forward was rapidly nearing the north, leaving to her leeward a long line of black smoke.
One was established in Porto Rico, and several others among the islands of Alaska, on whose rocky cliffs may be seen to-day clouds of Puffins, Auks, and Guillemots queer creatures that stand upright like a man crowding and shouldering each other about on the ledges which overlook the dark waters of Bering Sea.
I visited all these little islands in the summer of 1878 with Mr. Howard Saunders, and we found all the Puffins who had had eggs in holes in the earth had been robbed almost without an exception; the others, however, were pretty safe.
Here and there sharp points and slender needles rising to a height of 200 feet; further on a steep shore, hewn as it were with an axe and clothed with greyish tints; huge mirrors, reflecting a few rays of sunshine, half drowned in the fog. And over this desolate face of nature a stern silence reigned, scarcely broken by the flapping of the wings of petrels and puffins.
He levied on the puffins again, and, after a meal, prowled curiously about his rock to see what damage the storm had done, but to his surprise found almost none. It seemed incredible that all should be the same after the deadly onslaught of the gale. But it was only in the valley of rocks that he found any consequences.
Kirwan was thus lowered to the rocks near the sea, where the puffins bred; and, loosening the rope, he prepared to spend the night in catching them. He had a pole with a snare on the end, which he easily clapped on the heads of the heavy and stupid birds; then tied each on a string as he caught it, and so kept it to be hauled up in the morning.
This cape is so low that it gets confounded with the ice on the coast, a circumstance which often renders the hydrographic determination of the Polar seas extremely difficult. Puffins, ducks, and white sea-gulls showed up in very great numbers. The Forward was then in latitude 74 degrees 1 minute, and in longitude 77 degrees 15 minutes.
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