Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/538

504 longer than it is deep. I think only a few young were hatched; I saw no old birds carrying fish. The nests I examined consisted of a small quantity of grass-roots and dead grass—never more than a little, and in some cases hardly any. Accounts given of a Puffin's bite differ. They bite hard, and can draw blood from the soft parts of the fingers if they nip up a small piece of flesh; otherwise the bite is merely painful, though it is said that if you snatch you hand away the flesh is sometimes torn. Puffins can scratch also. They are ferocious fighters; I saw two fighting at the mouth of a burrow, and they only left off when I came close to them. A keen observer told me he had seen them grapple with one another, and roll over and over down the slope until they fell over the low cliff and into the sea, still hanging on like bull-dogs.

Guillemots breed at Cilan, on St. Tudwal's, and, as Mr. Coward tells me, near Nevin. Of thirty eggs which had been taken at Cilan for food, the dark green type, heavily marked with black, outnumbered all other varieties by five to one. At St. Tudwal's, too, this variety prevailed. The Guillemots, sitting upright on the ledges, had to be pelted with small stones in some cases before they would leave their eggs, and even then they shuffled the eggs carefully from under them, leaving the big end next to the wall, before dropping off the ledges. They dislike leaving the eggs for fear of being robbed by the Gulls; and, sure enough, a Lesser Black-back appeared on the scene almost at once, speering about the cliff. Two birds sitting on eggs only a foot apart were very interesting, for one was of the ordinary type, and the other a well-marked example of the Ringed Guillemot (as brown, though, as its neighbour). When at last I induced them to leave their eggs, I saw that both these had a green ground colour, marked with black.

Rock birds, I think, of all three species inhabit one or two small islands off the westernmost part of Lleyn. I hope to visit them next spring. Gulls breed there too, which is not surprising, as the Welsh names signify Great and Little Gull Island. Some Razorbills breed with the Guillemots about the great cliffs about Trwyn Careg y tîr and Mynydd Cilan. From above, the birds on the sea were only just visible to the naked eye; yet the cry, like that of an angry barn-door cock, came up fairly loud at