Loomery

The technical word for a breeding colony of guillemots, or looms.
My blip of a year ago shows the rock stack in its entirety and it reminded me to go back to view the spectacle again.
The reason why the birds chose an offshore location is because it provides protection from marauding land animals such as foxes and rats, although they are still prey to gulls that swoop in to snatch up unprotected eggs or chicks.
Guillemots don't make nests, they simply lay their eggs on these precipitous rock ledges and guard them with their feet and bodies. The eggs have a conical point so that they swivel round instead of rolling off.
Twenty days after hatching the young birds, still unable to fly, are guided by the parents to dive into the sea: they swim as soon as they hit the water. (A method formerly employed for children. My mother was tossed into the water by her brothers at an early age to teach her to swim. She did subsequently become a high diver.)
The sound of the loomery is remarkable. An unceasing, unpleasant cackling noise indicates that a continual gossip goes on in the "loomery"; and that the unanimity there is not great, is proved by the passionate screams which are heard now and then. Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, The Voyage of the Vega, 1878/9.
The home decor is somewhat insalubrious too, although it does get washed away after the breeding season.

Larger loomery