watch little familiar woodland birds by the wild sea shore and amidst stupendous scenery like this.
Puffins, at the right time, are, no doubt, very amorous, as even now, when they should be a little passé in such matters, I have seen them so. In this state they will sometimes indulge in quite a little frenzy first of kissing and then of cossetting—nibbling, that is to say, each other's feathers about the head and face. Indeed, such pretty little lover-like actions—mostly on the part of one bird of the two, I presume the female—were never seen.
But they are not only loving, these little birds. They are playful too, and, as I think, sympathetic. Thus when one, standing on the rock, gives its wings a little fluttering shake, another by the side of it—its mate, probably, but perhaps only its friend—will sometimes catch one of them in its adorned beak and playfully detain it. This is done with wonderful softness—obviously in good part, and so it is received. Is it not fun, then, playfulness? Perhaps it is not. It may be but a part of the passion-play, and we should not step too lightly in our judgment from primaries to secondaries. On my last visit here, for instance, whilst climbing painfully along this black beach—a horror of heaped stones and fragments, making, often, unscalable, albeit only miniature, precipices—I happened to see—looking down from a huge tilted rock that guarded one entrance to a little dark valley of confusion—I happened to see there a poor little puffin that had got its head caught in some
