Show ty vs v wl asN 11H UFflN T Ol G3W q n a t h s t e QlY 27l ° lKD7r s IB puffin is the Chinaman of the bird world Ho alone TIE his kind has that fold of skin at the Inner angle of the eye that under the name of the third eyelid makes the Mongolian eyo such a distinctive feature of his human representative This setting of the eye In an oblique chink gives the puffin that fixed quizzical expression expres-sion which has led most observers to call It a quaintlooking bird but which o me Irresistibly calls to mind the hlnamans blandlooking face that like a mask gives no sign of the working work-Ing of the Inner mind It Is a disappointment after seeing your first puffin at close quarters at his homo In puffintown to turn up his description In any birdbook and find after all the meticulous description of his feathers and the order of the colors col-ors on his rainbowtinted beak that this distinctive feature of tho screwed up eye Is never mentioned The illustrations Illus-trations In these books are as disappointing disap-pointing as the text the eye being as much like a rabbits as a puffins Besides Be-sides the Mongolian eye ho has the Mongolian secretiveness as well Inoffensive In-offensive and unobtrusive ho is silent as ho stands upright or moves about somewhat uncertainly on his dapper I little red legs finong tho noisy crowd on the rocks It Is onlr from the depths of his burrow in the spongy red soil or from his chink among the llchen covered rocks that the sound of his language reaches your ear In the privacy of his home he now and then utters strange sounds that when first heard resemble somewhat In their subdued intonation the distant lowing low-ing of cattle or shouting of men But when you know him better you will fancy you can hear In his deep mournful Arrh a weary sigh indicative indica-tive of his fate For he Is the patient coolly o the shore with worse than Indnntiir11 labor fbr his fate All then the-n lUL oiidses look to him to provide them with an easy meal Every time the proud peregrines offspring in the eyrie whimper for food a puffin somewhere some-where has to pay toll by giving up the ghost and yet although this is almost an hourly occurrence on a summers day tho other puffins continue uncomplaining uncom-plaining and unheeding A model parent the puffin must b < j for though It lays but a single egg it manages to maintain Its numbers year after year in spite of the heaviest taxation tax-ation There is no colony of the lesser blackbacked gull where puffins breed that is not strewn with the corpses of this humblo little bird Were I a puffin this Is the fate I 1 should most resent The peregrine at least wastes nothing leaves nothing but the beakand legs but the cold blooded gull simply disembowels the poor bird and leaves the rest to rot I have never seen the tragedy of Its death whether it Is killed on land or as It swims on the sea or as It flies through the air but were I a hungry bird of prey I think It would tempt me most as it skims through the air For all the world it looks like a fat mackerel fitted with a pair of wings which hardly seem strong enough to carry its plump little body to Its des tlnntlon In fact as it whirrs up from the sea to Its burrow as likely as not it will turn head over heels as It i strikes the ground and then got up and make a wry face as It spits the will dash headlong against a rock with a smack that you would think would kill It and then look round as stupidly stupid-ly as a sheep that In its blundering course fulfils Its fate as mutton AI though each colony of lesser black backs shows the bloody tribute of the unfortunate puffin that of tho greater blackback shows no evidence of this kind In the whole community of a hun dyed nests of this ruler of the arch pelago for not oven the fierce peregrine pere-grine disputes his swaythere was not a single puffin corpse to bo soon Puhii2TJWH 4 Unfortunately for all the Immaculate whiteness of his head and neck ho has the same tolltalo blood fleck ornamenting or-namenting his lower Jaw as has his lesser relative he has tho same cold eye and oven a blacker back n real sooty black and if there are no traces of bloodguiltiness between the nests mayhap It Is because he goes one better bet-ter than they and swallows his mutton mut-ton whole Indeed fishermen say that ho stands by the puffins burrow like a graven Imago watching patiently and then when at last the victim comes out ho Is suddenly caught by the back of the neck has the life shaken out of him and Is then gulped down Ilelns bOlus I do not wish to malign the lessor blackbacked gull to the extent of suggesting sug-gesting by implication that it disembowels disem-bowels its victims whllo still alive In fact the only evidence I have is distinctly dis-tinctly to the contrary Mr J W Parsons Par-sons late at the Farnes lighthouse and a most acute observer of birdlife tells mo that ho once saw a lesser blackback kill a puffin Ho did not see It catch tho bird but It was killed by being shaken as a terrier shakes a rat and then ducked under water until drowned Then the gull flew with It on to a rock and after disemboweling It tried many times to swallow It whole but could not got It down On the land the puffins footing seems uncertain certain In the air Its flight labored I therefore the place to sea It at Its best must be as It hunts its prey un der water Much do I envy observers like Edmund Ed-mund Selous who have watched it as It wings its way beneath tho waves with Its scarlet legs trailing behind As you approach in a boat a little group of puffins sitting on the water you get an Inkling of their water magic When you get too near to them for their peace of mind but not near enough for you to see how It Is done first one and lien another disappears You sea no dive just a bird sitting motionless and then a little swirl where was the bird But If you want to see one of the fairy sights of bird land go to puffintown and resting your back ugalnst a convenient rock ho content to sit still for an hour In front of you Is a shelving tract of bare brown earth nearly an acre In extent riddled In all directions with burrows that so undermlno the ground that however carefully you walk across It a clumsy foot Is sure sooner or later to bAl into some puffin habitation All flan 1 puffins that your advent Ills urbed are bobbing up and sit In hundreds hun-dreds in the bay below Presently If you aro quiet they begin to whirr up from the sea In twos and threes and then scores and battalions As likely as not the very first that pitch will alight within two or three yards of you Others as they circle round will draw up their feet which had been extended as If for alighting and so pass out to sea onco more Out before long puffintown will be densely dense-ly populated by Un staid little inhabitants inhab-itants all hearing that fixed puzzled expression that makes them look almost al-most comical In their solemnity Some stand still with just an occasional flapping of their wings as If to dry them others take aimless little runs on their dapper little red legs and then stand still looking round as if puzzled what the next move Is to be Others fall awkwardly as they alight and promptly drop down a hole in tho ground just ae the nextdoor neighbor neigh-bor maybe pops up from another hole and whirrs out to sea In a little group of five two havo caught hold of one anothers beaks and are having a tussle I tus-sle but whether In amity or not I cannot can-not toll Every now and then quite a quarter of the population will suddenly sudden-ly bend forward and in an Instant In a great cloud are whirring out to sea while those left behind look puzzled at their sudden departure and Just as puzzled when in a few minutes all the wanderers return each taking up its position again Many observers have been puzzled to understand how the puffin manages to catch one fish after another and pack each methodically across Its Jaws but as Mr King opens the beak of a dead puffin yottthave tho answer from the puffins own mouth for there on its palate are the rows 01 barbs sloping back between which the fish arc filed There is much more to be told about this Interesting little bird especially if all were known But puzzled as the puffin looks there leone le-one thing known to that little mind behind tho mask but which puzzles us and that is tho still unsolved mystery mys-tery of where ho spends his wintertime winter-time FRANCIS HEATHERLEY |