Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/188

164 upwards, the long beak spearing the air. The sudden revealment of his lithe wet outline seems to diminish his size, and he becomes in a much greater degree long, lank, and snaky, like a Shag. For a moment—as he alights—he stands almost as upright as a Penguin; then, bending snakily forward, with legs straddled wide apart, he waddles a step or two along the raft, seeming to feel for the eggs with the feathers between his legs; then sinks forward on his breast, and sits at ease with his head drawn down upon his back. The female bird now swims much farther afield—too far for me to make out what she is doing, but probably she is feeding. I have now seen plainly that when preening these birds turn very much on one side, thus showing in a gleam—bright to dazzling—the silver of the breast, or rather ventral surface, almost in its full extent. I leave at seven, there having been no further change on the nest.

May 4th.—At 5 a.m. I find the male bird on the nest. As I approach the tree from which I watch, and whilst still a great way off, he leaves it, but keeps close about, sometimes swimming a few yards away from it, then turning, diving, and emerging again just beside it. Then pressing against it with his breast, he cranes forward his neck, and looks into it, then coasts round it a little, again cranes his neck, and in a moment makes his lithe Cormorant leap, and is on it. The spring is very quick and sudden, yet smooth and without splash, suggesting that the bird has been oiled, or that he passes from oil rather than water. He stands but a moment—just one flash of a Cormorant—and then sinks flatly and smoothly down.

5.50.—The female, who has been before invisible, is now all at once there, and approaches the nest, swimming to it quietly and placidly over the sun-bathed mirror of the lake. It is clearly the female, for the other, the male, is considerably larger, and has a larger crest. Both birds remain quietly by the nest for a minute or so, the male turned sideways in the water so that full three-fourths of his beautiful silver breast is exposed; and as he preens it, assiduously spearing into the thick fur of feathers with his long finely-pointed bill, one of his finned feet or paddles is often raised above the surface of the water, and beats it idly. The female then takes her place on the nest, but her leap is not so lithe and subtle, so instinct with nervous energy, so