"Voracious from the billows' breast Marked far away, his destined feast."
Its cry is a cruel, clear-ringing bark, very characteristic of the fierce baron of the cliffs, and when circling in company a pair can be heard yelping to each other until eye and ear together fail to catch sight or sound of them. When they are young the sea eagles, as yet unconscious perhaps of their birthright of supremacy, roam about among the moors and valleys, finding their food where they can, killing weakly lambs, or joining the raven in an ignoble meal on carrion.
Sometimes, strange to say, this creature of vast spaces and dizzy heights will nest in trees or even among reeds upon the ground. But its characteristic haunts are the wildest and most rugged sea-cliffs, and its hunting-grounds the rocky islets or tall upstanding bluffs and "peopled rocks" upon which the sea-folk cluster in their colonies.
"_The high and frowning scaur, the haunt of sea-fowl_" MACKAY.
"_The pregnant cliffs, the sea-birds' citadels_" MONTGOMERY.
"_Yonder peopled rocks,_ _To whose wild solitude, from worlds unknown,_ _The birds of passage transmigrating come--_
_By Heaven's directive spirit here to raise_ _Their temporary realm._" MALLET.
No one, however indifferent he may be to the ordinary sights and sounds of Nature, can maintain even the affectation of unconcern when visiting for the first time the
ledged and terraced rocks upon which the brave guillemots congregate. As the boat approaches the sea-girt nesting-home of these delightful birds, the cliff, looked at through glasses, seems garrisoned by a multitude of little soldiers in black and white. They are standing to attention, shoulder to shoulder, along every ledge, in level lines where continuous foothold permits it, in little knots on every broader plateau, while the summit is thronged. As the boat gets nearer you see that, besides the white-breasted birds standing upright, there are just as many showing their black backs sitting on the ground, or rather propped up on their tails.
The latter are sitting-birds, for the eggs are so large as compared with the mothers that they cannot be sate upon in the ordinary brooding manner of other fowls. So the guillemot, when she wishes to sit, walks up to her egg and then with her beak pushes it between her legs, and so straddling as it were over it, she remains always at an angle, her body resting against the egg, instead of nestling down upon it.