597 

 THE FULMAE PETREL. 



PROCELLARIA GLACIALIS. 



Head, neck, under plumage, and tail, white ; wings bluish ash, the primaries 

 brownish grey ; beak, irides, and feet, yellow. Young of the year grey, tinged 

 with brown, mottled on the back -nath deeper brown ; bill and feet yellowish 

 ash. Length seventeen inches. Eggs white. 



The name Fulmar must be familiar to all readers of Ai'ctic 

 voyages, though, they may not be aware that the bird so 

 called is an occasional visitor to our shores. In some of the 

 Outer Hebrides Fulmars even breed ; but the great station, 

 to which tens of thousands annually resort, is the remote 

 island of St. Kilda. To the Fulmar, indeed, and in a less 

 degree to the Gannet and two or three other sea-birds, the 

 island is indebted for its being able to boast of human 

 inhabitants. Eggs and birds, fresh or salted, furnish them 

 with food ; the Fulmar with oil ; and feathers pay their 

 rent. 



Professor James Wilson says : " The oil is extracted from 

 both the young and old birds, which, however, they must 

 seize on suddenly, and strangle, else, as a defensive move- 

 ment, the desired (and pungent) oil is immediately squirted 

 in the face and eyes of their opponent." This oil is ejected, 

 not, as it is sometimes said, through tubular nostrils, but 

 directly through the throat and open mouth. The flesh 

 of the Fulmar is also a favourite food with the St. Kildans, 

 who like it all the better on account of its oily nature. 



The Fulmar is essentially a sea-bird, and never comes to 

 land except in the breeding season, when it builds its nest 

 of herbage on the grassy shelves of the highest cliffs, and 

 lays a single egg, if which be taken, it lays no more. The 

 young birds are fed with oil by the parents, and on being 

 molested spurt out through the throat and open mouth 

 the same fluid, which, being of a rank smell, i/ifects not 

 only the nest, but the whole neighbourhood. The young 

 birds, which are taken early in August, are boiled, and made 



