The following is an extract from The Birds of Iona and Mull (1890) by Henry Davenport Graham.
As their mode of nesting differs from the Guillemot’s and Razorbill’s, Puffins are more local in their choice of breeding places.
Many of the islands, however, provide suitable spots for them. Some, like Staffa, in holes and crannies of the rock.
Others are crowned by banks of soft, unctious soil, grown over with grass and sea-pink, which are honeycombed by burrows of the puffins which have inhabited them for generations and have reared their young within sound of the ceaseless roaring of the surf which ever rolls under the feet of the frightful overhanging crags.
When intruded upon in these their dangerous haunts, they show little signs of timidity.
The old birds remain sitting on their eggs, with their grotesque faces and formidable bills protruding from the doors of their holes, prepared to guard their nest and administer a most formidable bite to any intrusive fingers.
Others continue flying uneasily past the intruders which they do in a very swift and undeviating line of flight, their wings vibrating with insect-like rapidity, their red legs and paws sticking out behind, wide spread in a most ungraceful fashion.
They sweep past, close along the face of the cliff, within a few feet of the visitors; then, swooping out seaward, they make a circuit, and so pass and repass again and again.
This they all do in the same direction (with or against the sun), and they never cease all the time you remain, giving the appearance of an aerial Puffin procession.
They never, however, come actually over the land,so that though any amount may be shot, they all go whirling down the abyss into the ocean beneath where they may be picked up by your comrade in the boat.
They are certainly the most eatable of their tribe, and, in St Kilda, form an important part of the islander’s sustenance.
At Lochgilphead, I saw little of the Puffin, though they came early in May in thousands which scattered themselves over Loch Fyne, all disappearing by the end of the month.
These were only a division of the grand army progressing north.
At this time, I often observed them, towards evening, fly in small flocks right up Loch Gilp; then, reaching its head, they make a sweep round it and stand out to sea again.
At this point, Loch Fyne branches out into two arms like the letter Y.
One runs up 30 miles to Inveraray; the other, a truncated one only of three miles, now terminates at Lochgilphead, but before the pre-historic fall of the sea-level ran through Glen Crinan and joined the Western Ocean.
Engineering has re-united it by means of the Crinan Canal, but it seems to me that the Puffin’s instinct forbids them to fly across the few intervening miles of dry land, and the attempts of these pioneering parties at discovering a north-west sea passage are futile, and so the great host must turn south again to double the Mull of Kintyre.
I have reared young Puffins successfully.
One became very tame and attempted to follow me. He was unmolested by cats or dogs when he waddled about, as they had a proper respect for his tremendous bill.
Before he entirely lost all his down, his appearance was, if possible, more comical, as a tuft adhered to his head like a chancellor’s wig.
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