Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/195

Rh touching, and keep moving them from side to side in opposite directions, their two beaks crossing each other and shooting out suddenly on each side of the two necks like sharp little daggers. At the same time they both utter a short, quickly repeated note of a clucking or clacking description, strongly expressive of content and gratulation—and this they did before, though I omitted to note it. It is thus evident that it is the habit of these birds when fighting to dive and attack each other under the water, and this habit they share with the Black Guillemot, and no doubt with other diving birds. Judging by the way in which the one bird flew off, he must, I think, have received a very effective spear-thrust from the other's beak.

I now think it possible that I was mistaken as to its having been the male which I first saw alone by the ruined nest that went through the first congratulation scene with the female. It does not seem likely that a bird so favoured and victorious should have allowed a third party to "consort" with its spouse, and afterwards, till the final discomfiture of the third bird, the pair were always together. I might have mistaken the two birds, as one, at least, was frequently diving, probably the other also, but I cannot now recall it clearly. It is even possible that there may have been a transposition of the two owing to such an attack as I have described, but which, not being quite so salient as the other ones, as well as quite new to me, I may have missed. Still there is nothing except what seems to me now to be the probability of the case which should make me doubt the accuracy of my observation. But we have this point which is interesting, that the solitary and defeated male remained during the interval between two attacks made upon him near the place where the nest had been, and this was where I first saw the supposed other male. Now, what should a new arrival know about this nest of two other birds? unless, indeed, he had destroyed it; and then his feelings would not be of such a nature as to prompt him to hang sadly about it. But now, suppose that he had indeed destroyed it, ousted the other bird, and supplanted him in the affections of his wife, then we can understand that other one lingering near the ruins of his home. That this should really have been the case seems altogether improbable, but perhaps the possibility is not quite excluded. It was on the morning that I