Dr. R. 0. Cunningham on the Solan Goose. 9 



fisher^s throat, and pulls out the fish with its bill as with a pincer, 

 and that with a very great noise, which I had occasion frequently 

 to observe. They continue to pluck grass for their nests from 

 their coming in March till the young fowl is ready to fly in 

 August or September, according as the inhabitants take or leave 

 the first or second eggs. It^s remarkable of them that they 

 never pluck grass but on a windy day, the reason of which I 

 enquired of the inhabitants, who said that a windy day is the 

 Solan Goose's vacation from fishing, and they bestow it upon this 

 employment, which proves fatal to many of them, for after their 

 fatigue they often fall asleep, and the inhabitants laying hold on 

 this opportunity are ready at hand to knock them on the head. 

 Their food is herring, mackrels, and syes ; English hooks are 

 often found in the stomachs both of young and old Solan Geese, 

 though there be none of this kind used nearer than the Isles, 

 twenty leagues distant ; the fish pulling away the hooks in those 

 isles go to St. Kdda, or are carried by the old geese thither ; 

 whether of the two the reader is at liberty to judge. 



" The Solan Geese are always the surest sign of herrings, for 

 wherever the one is seen the other is always not far off. There 

 is a tribe of barren Solan Geese which have no nests and sit on 

 the bare rocks ; these are not the young fowls of an year old, 

 whose dark colour would soon distinguish them, but old ones, 

 in all things like the rest ; these have a province, as it were, 

 allotted to them, and are in a separated state from the others, 

 having a rock two hundred paces distant from all other, neither 

 do they meddle with or approach to those hatching, or any other 

 fowls. They sympathize and fish together : this being told me 

 by the inhabitants, was afterwards confirmed to me several times 

 by my own observation. 



" The Solan Geese have always some of their number that 

 keep centinel in the night-time, and if they are surprised, as it 

 often happens, all that flock are taken one after another ; but if 

 the centinel be awake at the approach of the creeping fowlers, and 

 hear a noise, it cries softly, Ch-off, Grog, at which the flock move 

 not ; but if this centinel see or hear the fowler approaching, he 

 cries quickly, Bir, Bir, which would seem to import danger, since 

 immediately after all the tribe take wing, leaving the fowler empty 



