NOTES OX THE BIRDS OF ST. KILDA 145 



work they always choose a windy day, and work on that 

 side of the island towards which the wind is blowing. You 

 will see patches quite white with them when so employed. 

 Frequently when so engaged they seem to get tired and 

 fall asleep. At such times, if any of the natives happen to 

 be on the islands which they frequent, they can catch 

 numbers of them in full daylight. When men are left on 

 Boreray for some days to get a supply of feathers, if they 

 want the boat sent to them before the time arranged for, 

 they dig over a certain green patch as the signal. On one 

 occasion the boat was despatched in response to such a signal, 

 but to their mutual surprise found that they were not ex- 

 pected. It turned out that the gannets had selected this 

 spot for their grass-cutting and had bared it completely. 

 Before the young birds leave the nest they have moulted 

 this early down, and are covered with dark speckled feathers 

 which at a distance appear black. When it returns in 

 spring it is distinctly speckled, and is then called by the 

 same name as the young shearwater " fathach." A little 

 before it is ready to leave the nest it is very fat, but by 

 the time it is fully fledged it is leaner. 



These birds never breed on Soay or on any part of St. 

 Kilda proper, but only on the islands of the Boreray group 

 Boreray, Stacklia, and Stack-an-armin. Martin says that 

 in his time twenty-three thousand " gugas " were killed 

 annually, but probably this is only a very vague estimate. 

 Nothing like that number are killed now. Never since I 

 came to the island have they killed in any year more than 

 two thousand " gugas," and about the same number of old 

 birds. About eighty of the old birds will yield a stone of 

 feathers (24 Ibs.). Last year (1840) they only secured a 

 little more than twenty stones. It takes on an average 

 eighty " gugas " when salted to fill a barrel. In general 

 they are very fat, but some years they are quite lean and 

 comparatively worthless. This also is true of all the birds 

 which frequent the island ; some years they are much leaner 

 than others. From the information which I got from the 

 natives, I do not believe that they ever in any one year 

 killed more than five thousand " gugas," and from two to 

 three thousand old birds. There is no reason why they 

 55 c 



