Nothing, surely, can be more beautiful than the sudden uprising of many birds, whether the scarlet battalions of flamingoes leaving in sumptuous tumult the Egyptian marshes; the gay parrot flights when changing feeding-grounds in the Australian bush, or this sight of our myriad guillemots as with one accord they fill the air with their white wings, and, beautifully stooping to the sea, spread themselves in a sheet of pied dots upon the green water. And as you land you feel that all those thousands of eager eyes are watching you, thousands of little hearts thumping with misgiving at your intrusion. And here and there one bird is sometimes seen still bravely "holding the fort," not with any defiance, but a calm, good-soldierly courage that commands respect. And now and again a mother will return, too anxious about her egg to remember the risk to herself, or, remembering it, too anxious to care about the risk; she comes with hurrying wing, and, before the very eyes of the unmannerly trespasser, takes possession of her treasure, and tucking it in between her legs turns her back upon the company and trusts to Kismet for the result. But those gaunt and grim-faced rocks, ribbed and wrinkled by the wear-and-tear of sea and weather, are only the nurseries of the guillemots, not their homes; for they live for nine months of the year upon the dancing sea, never coming back to the solid crags at all. Early in spring the first of them, the advanced couriers of the colony, reappear from the ocean, reconnoitring their egg-towers, and then they disappear again, as if to convey the news to the rest that the earth still stands where it did. And then about May the guillemots begin to come in earnest, and, astounding as the fact is, each bird actually seems to remember the very spot upon which it laid its eggs the year before, for we are told that the professional egg-hunters, who for a score of years or more have regularly rifled the sea-birds' terraces, are accustomed to find, year after year, in particular places, eggs of a particular shape, or size, or colour. For there are few eggs, if any, that differ so boldly both in the ground colour [Illustration: THE SEA-PARROTS AT HOME]