We were on the outer Rock, our only possible ascent taking us up the sheer south face. With the exception of an occasional Western gull’s and pigeon guillemot’s nest, these steep sides were occupied entirely by the California murres,--penguin-shaped birds about the size of a small wild duck, chocolate-brown above, with white breasts,--which literally covered the sides of the three great rocks wherever they could find a hold. If a million meant anything, I should say there were a million murres nesting on this outer Rock; not nesting either, for the egg is laid upon the bare ledge, as you might place it upon a mantel,--a single sharp-pointed egg, as large as a turkey’s, and just as many of them on the ledge as there is standing-room for the birds. The murre broods her very large egg by standing straight up over it, her short legs, by dint of stretching, allowing her to straddle it, her short tail propping her securely from behind. On, up along the narrow back, or blade, of the rock, and over the peak, were the well-spaced nests of the Brandt’s cormorants, nests the size of an ordinary straw hat, made of sea-grass and the yellow-flowered sulphur-weed that grew in a dense mat over the north slope of the top, each nest holding four long, dirty blue eggs or as many black, shivering young; and in the low sulphur-weed, all along the roof-like slope of the top, built the gulls and the tufted puffins; and, with the burrowing puffins, often in the same holes, were found the Kaeding’s petrels; while down below them, as up above them,--all around the rock-rim that dropped sheer to the sea,--stood the cormorants, black, silent, statuesque; and everywhere were nests and eggs and young, and everywhere were flying, crying birds--above, about, and far below me, a whirling, whirring vortex of wings that had caught me in its funnel. CHAPTER VIII THE MOTHER MURRE I hear the bawling of my neighbor’s cow. Her calf was carried off yesterday, and since then, during the long night, and all day long, her insistent woe has made our hillside melancholy. But I shall not hear her to-night, not from this distance. She will lie down to-night with the others of the herd, and munch her cud. Yet, when the rattling stanchions grow quiet and sleep steals along the stalls, she will turn her ears at every small stirring; she will raise her head to listen and utter a low, tender _moo_. Her full udder hurts; but her cud is sweet. She is only a cow. Had she been a wild cow, or had she been out with her calf in a wild pasture, the mother-love in her would have lived for six months. Here in the barn she will be forced to forget her calf in a few hours, and by morning her mother-love shall utterly have died.