Yet these are scarcely as true sea-birds as the divers, the Guillemots and Puffins, the Auks and Grebes, which swim out all round our coasts, and dive deep down to feed on the fish below. How clumsy they are on land and how skilful in the water! You may see numbers of guillemots and puffins in summer on the high cliffs of the north of Scotland, or of Puffin Island in the Menai Straits; the guillemots laying their eggs on the bare ledges, and the puffins in holes which they burrow in the cliffs face; and they sit so doggedly upon their nests, and shuffle and hop along so awkwardly, that men climbing up, or let down by ropes from above, knock them over as they go. But wait till the eggs are hatched, and the little ones have broken out of their shelly prison, each one cracking his shell from inside by means of a little horny knob, which all baby birds have for this purpose at the end of their beak, and which falls off when they are fairly born. Then fathers, mothers, and young ones, able to take care of themselves as soon as hatched, launch out into the open sea in August, and there is a sight of diving and swimming and fishing grand to behold. The awkward legs, placed so far back on their body, now serve as powerful oars and rudders to drive their smooth satiny bodies through the water. Their thin narrow legs cut through the waves like knives, while their short stumpy wings, closely laid against their down-covered bodies, keep them from being chilled, and so do the air-bubbles which are entangled in their short thick feathers, and which give their backs the appearance of being covered with quicksilver when they dive[98] after the fish below. And then when the winter comes, those which have bred in the north fly and swim southwards to our coasts, where they are joined by the true divers and grebes which have come from the rivers and estuaries, where they have made their nests on some reedy bank or floating upon the water, and lived till their young ones are strong. This is their seafaring time; and whether near the shore, or miles out at sea, they dive and swim and make the ocean their home till spring comes round again. [Illustration: Fig. 37. A Group of Sea-Birds. 1. Cormorant. 2. Black-winged Tern. 3. Gulls. 4. Puffins. 5. Guillemots.]