This little incident gives a hint as to some of the mischances which may befall puffins here. With such a jumble of heaped rocks and boulders there are great facilities for slipping or getting between them in such a way as might make it difficult to get out again, and an alarmed bird, caught as this one was, would, of course, pull and pull, wedging itself all the tighter. If found in this situation by a gull—or perhaps, skua—its fate would be sealed, and its picked and disembowelled carcase would then be left upon the rocks, as I have so often found it. Such a misfortune, indeed, cannot be supposed to be of common occurrence; but the hundreds of thousands of puffins must be considered.
I have said that puffins are amorous. They are bellicose also—the two, indeed, are interwoven together—and have a tendency—but this, perhaps, is included in the main proposition—to fight in mêlées. When two are about it a third and then a fourth joins, and so on, and several will stand menacing one another with their sharp, razor-like mandibles held threateningly open, and often moving like scissor-blades. Then, all at once, one springs on another, seizes him by the scruff of the neck, and—so it has often appeared to me—endeavours to throw him over whatever edge they both happen to be near—for they are generally near the edge of something. It is curious—or at least it takes one by surprise—that when the beak is thus opened it looks quite different to what it did before. Being divided, its breadth, which is such a
