Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/26

6 rats, the descendants of refugees from a wreck, but that now there are but few rats left. Although I have heard this story repeated by an old rabbit-trapper, who pretended or imagined that he remembered the absence of the puffins, I doubt if it is true; very likely it originated from someone who visited the island at the wrong time, unaware that the birds leave during summer. There are, on other parts of the Welsh coast, islands which are less accessible and further from watering-places, where the puffin colonies are very much larger. On these islands the birds are tamer, standing round the holes and flying up and down, from and to the water, without much concern; here the eggs are but a few feet from the entrance of the burrows, and the birds, wheeling overhead, are comparatively fearless. At Puffin the birds soon leave the slopes; every few minutes one will dart from a hole and fly straight to the water, where with crowds of companions it swims at a safe distance; they are shy. Many of the eggs are ten or twelve feet down the burrows, quite out of arm's reach in most cases. Constant persecution has had its effect both in numbers and habits.

Most of the puffins breed on the western slopes, the tunnels being under great masses of thrift, a wonderful sight when the flowers are out. Old Squire Pennant's description is quaint, but it contains many careful observations. In it he says: "The slope is animated with the puffin auk, which incessantly squall round you, alight, and disappear into their burrows, or come out, stand erect, gaze at you in a grotesque manner, then take flight, and either perform their evolutions about you or seek the sea in search of food." There are two noteworthy points, the first being the words "stand erect." Until recent years, even in Saunders’ "Manual," the puffin has always been represented as sitting on the flexed legs or tarsi, like a guillemot; really the bird stands