Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/303

290 On this subject, and on the seasonal resorts and habits of these tribes we cannot refrain from presenting to our readers the following charming pictures geographically drawn by Sir William Jardine. After noting the great proportion borne by this Order in the British Fauna, and remarking, that while thousands in summer seek our precipitous coasts and headlands as breeding stations, others, scarcely less numerous, flock in winter to our bays and marine inlets,—he thus proceeds:—

"The contrast of these localities at the different seasons is most striking: rocks standing far in the ocean's void, and precipices of the most dizzy height, to which all approach by land is cut off, possess a dreary solitude for seven or eight months of the year; a few Cormorants seeking repose during the night, or some Gulls claiming a temporary shelter or resting-place from the violence of the storm, are almost the only, and then but occasional, tenants. In the throng of the season of breeding, a very different picture is seen: the whole rocks, and sea, and air, are one scene of animation, and the various groups have returned to take up their old stations, and are now employed in all the accessories of incubation, affording lessons to the ornithological student he will in vain look for elsewhere. The very rocks are lighted up, and would seem to take a brightness from the hurry around, while the cries of the inhabitants, alone discordant, harmonise with the scene.

"During the same season, upon the low sandy or muddy coasts, or extensive meres, where the tide recedes for miles, and the only interruption on the outline is the slight undulation of some mussel-scalps, the dark colour of some bed of