Page:BirdWatchingSelous.djvu/211

Rh ornament their runs. I think it was on this same nest that I noticed the picked and partially bleached skeleton—with the head and wings still feathered—of a puffin. It had, to be sure, a sorry appearance to the human—at least to the civilised human—eye, but if it had not been brought there for the sake of ornament I can think of no other reason, and brought there or, at least, placed upon the nest by the bird, it must almost certainly have been. The brilliant beak and saliently marked head of the puffin must be here remembered. Again, fair-sized pieces of wood or spar, cast up by the sea and whitened by it, are often to be seen stuck amongst the seaweed, and on one occasion I saw a bird fly with one of these to its nest and place it upon it. In all this, as it seems to me, the beginnings of a tendency to ornament the nest are clearly exhibited. It would be interesting to observe if the common cormorant exhibits the same tendency, or to the same degree. The shag being a handsome and adorned bird, we might, on Darwinian principles, expect to find the æsthetic sense more developed in it than in its plainer and unadorned relative.

Both the sexes share in the duty and pleasure of incubation, and (as in some other species) to see them relieve each other on the nest is to see one of the prettiest things in bird life. The bird that you have been watching has sat patiently the whole morning, and once or twice as it rose in the nest and shifted itself round into another position on the eggs, you have seen the gleam of them as they lay there
 * "As white
 * as ocean foam in the moon."