There are also many Kittiwakes nesting about the cliffs of the Bass, and a few Herring Gulls. The former birds breed most abundantly upon the precipitous cliffs, low down many of them, and in very inaccessible spots. We have, however, taken many eggs of this Gull from nests nearer the top of the cliffs, and in places which we had little difficulty in reaching without the aid of a rope. The nest of this Gull is a substantial one, made largely of turf, which is trampled into a solid mass by the owners. Sea-weed and dry grass, as well as the dead stalks of plants, are also used. The eggs are usually two or three in number, green, or olive, or brown, of various shades, marked with darker brown and gray. Then amongst the cliffs great numbers of Guillemots and smaller numbers of Razorbills deposit their eggs in suitable spots; whilst the Jackdaw and the Rock Dove frequent them. The Daws are great robbers of eggs, and as soon as the Auks or Kittiwakes chance to leave them unprotected the foraging birds beat along the cliffs and pounce upon them, carrying them off transfixed on their bill. The Herring Gulls prefer the grassy downs in the hollow on the north side of the Bass, making their somewhat slight nests amongst the herbage. Their eggs closely resemble those of the Lesser Black-backed Gull—the brown varieties—but do not present anything like the same diversity, although they are as a rule perceptibly larger. We are glad to be able to state that the Peregrine Falcon breeds upon the rock, and on more than one occasion, after an exciting climb, aided by a rope, we have succeeded in reaching and minutely examining the nest of this interesting bird. It preys upon the Puffins, Rock Doves, and Guillemots that make the Bass their summer home, and we earnestly hope that it may long continue to frequent this noble pile of rock.
From the Bass it is a long jaunt to St. Kilda, but we will do the distance on Icarian wings, and contrive to reach the famous islands during the very height of the breeding season of the birds. We have appropriately left this romantic place to the last, for it is here, we say without hesitation, that littoral rock scenery throughout the northern shires culminates in grandeur, and that rock bird-life attains to its highest degree of impressiveness. Sixteen years ago the group of islands (collectively known as St. Kilda) were comparatively unknown to British ornithologists. Of their existence, of course, most bird-lovers knew, but only in a hazy sort of a way, whilst the wonders of their bird-life were even more traditional to most of us. Nowadays St. Kilda has become ornithologically “fashionable”; it is considered quite the correct thing to “do” the archipelago, and the place has become popularized—we had almost written a much stronger, if perhaps not quite so genteel a word. Sixteen years ago we visited the islands and published an account of their bird-life—the first, we believe, that had been written for nearly twenty years. We have in various works still further emphasized the richness of the place from an ornithological point of view. This, we profoundly regret to say, has resulted in a wild rush of collectors to the islands, with the inevitable result that the natives have been corrupted, and the Wren peculiar to the place has become threatened with absolute extermination! Better perhaps had we remained silent, at least until sufficient steps had been taken to secure the safety of perhaps the most interesting bird on the islands, if the most diminutive. Collectors have taught the St. Kildan that there is more wealth in the long-despised Wren than in the much-vaunted and highly protected Fulmar, but the source of it will prove a transient one indeed if something be not quickly done for its preservation.
It would be difficult to find, or even to imagine, more grandly beautiful rock scenery than St. Kilda presents. There is not, for instance, in all the British Islands, a precipice approaching in magnificence to that of Connacher, which is formed literally by the side of an island twelve hundred feet high falling sheer into the Atlantic; and when we add that this awful wall of rock is crowded with birds, almost from foot to summit, we complete a description which has no parallel in Britain. This is but one item in the grand sum total of the crags of St. Kilda. It would be as hard to conceive a more majestic outline of sea-crags than is formed by the towering jagged summits that cut the sky-line and form the long narrow sister island of Doon, forming the southern horn of a most picturesque, if somewhat treacherous bay, of which a spur of St. Kilda itself completes the watery enclosure. The cliffs that buttress the western isle of Soay, though not so high, are in their way as picturesque; whilst both islands literally swarm with birds, some of them the most local in the British avifauna. Then lying away to the north, four miles from St. Kilda, in lonely isolation, towers the lofty island rock mass of Borreay, with its two attendant satellites, Stacks Lii and Armin, all sacred to the Gannets that in tens of thousands crowd upon them during the summer months. This island itself rises nearly sheer in parts a thousand feet or so from the ocean. Undoubtedly the grand secret of the charm that has attracted sea-birds in such numbers to these rocky islets is their utter isolation and loneliness, combined with the vast food supply furnished by the surrounding sea. These islands are far without the ocean highways of vessels; they are rarely approached by man; whilst the small number of people—quite an ideal commonwealth in its way—that live there are sensible enough to treat the birds fairly, and not literally to kill the Geese that lay the golden eggs. They farm the birds as an agriculturist would his land, or a stock-keeper his sheep and cows; they allow them a close time, or perhaps the place is so extensive that these few fowlers are unable to exhaust the store, and the supply is kept up by natural increase. Be this as it may the birds live and thrive, and this notwithstanding the fact that the Sea Birds Protection Acts do not apply to any of the islands, possibly, as some readers might say, because it would be utterly impossible to enforce them, not even by removing every living soul from the place.
We need not linger here at any length upon species that we have already dealt with elsewhere. Such birds as Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins, and Gannets are here in vast abundance, but our space is required for the description of a few birds that we meet with nowhere else in the British archipelago in such numbers. The island of Doon, for instance, so thickly swarms with Puffins that when we land upon it these birds glide down to the sea in such countless hordes that the very face of the hillsides seems slipping away beneath us. As for the Guillemots, we knew an old St. Kildan, so the story ran in the village, who came across such numbers of their eggs upon the cliffs that he was compelled to take off his breeches and turn them into a bag to hold them! But there are more interesting birds to us, perhaps, breeding on Doon, and these are the Fork-tailed Petrels. They have their nests in burrows upon the grassy summit of the island. Those we discovered were on the western end, nearest to St. Kilda, and made in the rich soft soil, the burrows some two to five feet in length. At the end of this burrow the Petrel makes a scanty nest of dry grass, moss, and roots, upon which it lays a single egg, white in colour, faintly marked with dust-like specks of brown and gray. Sometimes a nest is dispensed with altogether. We caught some of the Petrels upon their nests, which, when released, flew about in a dazed sort of way as if unaccustomed to the light. These Petrels are chiefly crepuscular or nocturnal in their habits, and during the daytime not a bird will be seen. The St. Kildans pay little or no attention to such small birds, and possibly the Fork-tailed Petrels had remained here undisturbed for ages, for we are not aware that Bullock obtained any eggs from this colony when he discovered the species in the British Islands upwards of eighty years ago. Bullock, we might mention, came very near the honour of discovering this bird absolutely, for he was only anticipated by a year by Vieillot.
The Fork-tailed Petrel.
St. Kilda is indeed the grand head-quarters of our British Petrels. All the indigenous species breed there, and in greater numbers than they do anywhere else. The Stormy Petrel is common enough, and doubtless breeds on every island in the group. Its habits are almost precisely the same as those of the Fork-tailed Petrel, and its egg is similar in colour, only much smaller in size, as the bird is itself. But the grand colony of Manx Shearwaters is perhaps of more general interest; the bird breeds in many other parts of our islands, although nowhere in such numbers as it does here. Soay is its grand head-quarters, but great numbers breed in suitable localities on every other island in the group. This Petrel is also nocturnal in its habits, lying close concealed in its burrow during the day, coming out at dusk to search for food over the surrounding sea. St. Kildans say that the Manx Shearwater is one of their first bird visitors in spring, and amongst the last to leave in autumn. Probably the real fact of the case is that the bird haunts the islands throughout the year. Towards the end of May this Shearwater commences to lay. It provides a scanty nest of dry grass at the end of the burrow it has excavated, and here it lays a single white egg. Like the Owls and the Nightjars, this bird becomes active at nightfall. The Shearwaters then leave their burrows in thousands, and the grassy island becomes a scene of activity, birds coming and going in the gloom, and their cries filling the air. The “Scrapire”, as the St. Kildans call this bird, is a favourite article of food with them, and large quantities are caught at night, when parties of men visit the birds' haunts and knock the poor Shearwaters down with sticks or drag them from their holes.
The Fulmar.