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 CHAPTER XXVI

PIED PIPERS

HAVE just seen a sea-pie several times pull and tweak with his bill at the seaweed, apparently, till he secured something that had a white appearance. Holding this between the extreme tip of his mandibles, he each time retired up the rock with it, placed it, as it seemed to me, amidst some seaweed, and then ate it. This was looking down upon a great stack of rock at some distance, so that it was impossible to be certain in regard to such minutiæ. It seemed to me, as it has seemed before, that he had pulled, not hit, some small limpet or other shell-fish from off the seaweed, and then wedged it amidst other seaweed higher up so as to be able to pick out the inside more easily. Possibly, however, he merely laid it down without wedging it, but I cannot tell, and it is very difficult to get close enough to see just what these birds really do when they feed. On the grass, which they probe like starlings, one can get a pretty good sight of their actions, but not on the seashore. One thing I cannot help noticing, that whereas limpets are all about on the rocks and need no looking for, they walk about as if they were looking for something, and they leave the bare rock that is all stuck over with them for the parts that are covered with seaweed, and at 218