Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/27

Rh upright on the so-called feet, actually the toes, and when it rests on the tarsi sinks forward on to its breast. Photography has brought this fact to light, but before the days of photography Pennant had noticed it. The other is the word "grotesque"; what is it about the puffin which is, in our eyes, grotesque? The big. highly coloured beak, the squat, upright figure, and the bird's actions have caused much hilarity. It is what Dr. F. Heatherley calls its "Chinese" eye that gives its solemn countenance the quaint appearance; but the eye is not oblique, not Chinese; the curious effect is produced by its deep setting in the full cheek and the conspicuous backward curving groove.

"The young," says Pennant, "are hatched in the beginning of July. The parents have the strongest affection for them; and if layed hold of by the wings will give themselves most cruel bites on any part of the body they can reach, as if actuated by despair." Now the puffin, which possesses a brightly coloured and very powerful beak, certainly can bite when "layed hold of," but it generally manages to seize the hand or clothes of the aggressor, and leaves its mark. I have seen it stated that the bird will not bite in the dark, so that it is safe to handle it in the burrow; my experience does not confirm this. A lighthouse keeper who was with me on one visit carefully wrapped his hand in his handkerchief before pushing it into a burrow; "I know Tommy Noddy," he remarked. When seized the puffin utters a deep growl, and the same note may be heard from birds in the holes and on the water, but the best emphasis is from the handled victim. It "is horrible," according to Pennant; "not unlike the efforts of a dumb person to speak"; perhaps it is as well that we cannot understand the language!

The description supplied by the Rev. J. Evans in 1804