My island again!--and all the birds still there, looking just as they did when I left it. More, too, have come. At night, but in a sort of murky daylight, I walk over the breeding-ground of the terns, a long flat strip of pebbly beach--or rather the heather a little way above it, for on the beach itself they do not appear to have laid. Rising, all at once, as is their wont, they make a second smaller canopy, above me, floating midway beneath the all-overshadowing one of dreary low-lying cloud. Out of it, ever and anon, some single bird shoots down, with a cry so sharp and shrill that it seems to pierce the ear like a pointed instrument. Occasionally an oyster-catcher darts in amongst them al…
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