Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/471

 the limits of a deep greenish grey, mottled with still deeper spots and markings. "Very like plovers'," remarks an uninitiated friend. Very, indeed! These are the so-called plovers' eggs that figure on many a breakfast table!

Few places afford such glimpses of the sea birds at home as the outer Farne Islands. The Pinnacles are narrow, needle-like rocks, rising sheer out of the water, without a break, to an immense height. Their almost level table-tops present the curious sight of thousands of guillemots, close packed and standing on their tails—this is really their way of sitting, each on its one egg, which it holds between its feet. No foot of man or beast can reach them; but we can get a fair view from the high parts adjacent. It may be their colour—a parsonic black and white—and the leg being placed so far back that they have a standing-up look, that imparts such ludicrous solemnity. They utter a strange cry, all together, and with intervals of perfect stillness between. It is a strong, resonant boom like thunder, loud and penetrating, but so weird that one may fancy it passing for the supernatural in the dark, without very much help from the fears of the superstitious.