Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/62

36 Rabbits occur on the mountain, and, when not shot down, in the fields below. In the shallow burrows laboriously worked in the rocky ground there are no puffins, but there are Manx shearwaters. There are not, however, rabbit-burrows enough for the shear-water colony, and by far the greater number of the birds lay their single white egg in some deep crack or hole amongst the rocks. In these rocky holes we handled several birds, and brought out one blue-grey baby of but a few days old; the mother bird, after biting furiously with the long, thin, hook-tipped bill, flew when released straight out to sea, leaving her light-dazzled infant to scramble back as best it could into its dusky retreat. The shearwater, according to popular ideas, cannot rise from the ground without difficulty; it is true that they do not stand upright, in the position in which they are often depicted and always stuffed, but resting on the tarsus and with breast well down the bird spread its long wings, flopped down the slope, and in a few seconds was clear of the cliff. The shearwater, for many months in the year pelagic, is thoroughly at home on the wing.

When, in the evening, we were sitting in the cosy kitchen of the farm, discussing with our genial host and hostess the doings of Bardsey "and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland" we learnt that the shearwaters were most lively during a heavy rainfall or in fog. Rain came on that night, heavy rain, and before we retired to bed we enjoyed the shearwater concert. The birds we had handled had had little to say, only a few guttural grumblings; but this was a treat we had hardly expected. We had read of the strange voice of this strange bird, and of its habit of calling at night; we had heard vivid descriptions from lighthouse keepers; we had formed no mental picture of the reality. As the birds came flying swiftly round the hill, passing unseen in the darkness,