ST. PAUL'S ROCKS. 



69 



I landed in the first boat. The rock was covered with 

 noddies, and their nests, some containing eggs, whitish in colour, 

 with red spots at the larger end, and others with young in them, 

 little round balls of black down. The air was full of noddies 

 and boobies, circling about, and screaming in disgust at the 

 invasion of their home. 



The noddies' nests are made of a green seaweed (Caulerpa 

 clavifera) which grows on the bottom in the bay and around the 

 rocks, and which getting loosened by the surf, floats, and is 

 picked up by the birds on the surface. The weed is cemented 

 together by the birds' dung, and the nests having been used for 

 ages, are now solid masses, with a circular platform at the 

 summit, beneath which hang down a number of tails of dried 

 seaweed. The older nests pro- 

 ject from the cliffs on the shel- 

 tered sides of the rocks, like 

 brackets, having been origin- 

 ally commenced, as may be 

 seen by the complete gradua- 

 tions existing, by a pair of 

 birds laying an egg on a small 

 projecting ledge of rock and J 

 adding a few stalks of weed. 



It is only the stronger and 

 more vigorous noddies that are 

 able to occupy and hold posses- 

 sion of a nest of this descrip- 

 tion. There are only a limited 

 number of such on the island, there not being cliffs enough to 

 accommodate more.* The island being somewhat over-populated, 

 a great many noddies have to put up with the bare flat rocks 

 as breeding-places, and there they lay their eggs in any slight 



NEST OF NODDT AT ST. PAUL S ROCKS. 



* The two species of noddy occurring at the rocks are so nearly alike, 

 that I did not notice at the time that there was more than one species 

 present ; a fact which I have since learnt from Mr. Howard Sanders' 

 paper — "On the Laridse of the Expedition," Proc. Zool. Soc, 1877, pp. 

 797, 798. Possibly the birds, which make bracket-like nests, are of one 

 species only, and those which build on the ground, of the other. 



