over, as there is no night properly so speaking, only a portentous lurid murkiness towards midnight, which seems neither to belong to night nor day, and in which, as you can read small print, the skua can very naturally see you, there is no approaching under cloud of darkness and being there, ensconced, when morning dawns. But that the bird disgorges the herrings for the young ones after the manner of gulls generally, and does not carry them in its beak or claws, which is contrary to their practice, there can be no doubt. Now, as every one of these herrings has—as I believe it has—been secured in the manner above described, it is curious to reflect that, when finally swallowed by the young skua, it "goes a progress" for the third time, nor would it be easy, perhaps, to find another instance (outside this family of birds) of prey that has been twice given up, through fear once, and then, again, through love.
The herrings lying about the nest, and which have thus been recently disgorged for the second time, look almost as fresh and clean as if nothing peculiar had happened to them. They are disgorged whole, or nearly so; for, as I myself observed, in the great majority of cases the head is absent. Thus at one nest, in the neighbourhood of which (but this means often a considerable space of ground) forty-one herrings or their remains were lying, only ten retained the head or any part of it. At another, where there were thirteen, all were entirely headless: at another there were eight, of which one only had part of the head remaining: at another ten, eight of which were headless: at another seven, six of which were: and at another four, of which one retained the
