SEA-CLIFFS IN NESTING TIME 133 



while the smaller bird is a dark slaty grey. All gulls are 

 keen and voracious birds ; but the greater black-back, or 

 ' cobs ' as they are often called locally, are almost if not 

 quite as fierce a foe to young birds and even young lambs 

 as the raven. Like most cliff-breeding species, it is much 

 commoner in Scotland than in England ; and there it is 

 bitterly hated by the farmers and shepherds of the coasts 

 and islands where it nests. Its range runs from Dorset 

 and Cornwall, where a few pairs breed among the colonies 

 of herring gulls, right round the west coasts of Britain and 

 Ireland as far as the Forth. It also breeds by a few inland 

 lochs, generally on secure islets, in solitary districts near 

 the sea. With its fierce eye, dark mantle, and hooked 

 yellow beak, the male black-back is one of the boldest in 

 appearance of all our birds, and is a true bird of prey. It 

 has the same fine habit as most hawks of choosing a 

 commanding situation for its nest, and drives other birds 

 away from it with the vigilant fierceness of the raven. 



Of the two remaining species of gulls nesting in these 

 islands, the kittiwake breeds on comparatively few cliffs 

 south of the Scottish border, and the common gull only very 

 occasionally in that wonderful preserve, the Fame Islands. 

 During a week on the Fames the writer saw no common 

 gull amongst the hundreds of herring and lesser black- 

 backs all sitting. The common gull's name is rather mis- 

 leading, so far as concerns its distribution at the breeding 

 season, and its numbers at any time ; but in winter it 

 is widely distributed in small numbers along all our coasts. 

 Guillemots, razorbills, and puffins are generally less widely 

 distributed than the gulls, but are amazingly abundant in 

 many of their favourite summer haunts. Between the chalk 

 cliffs of Flamborough Head and those of Kent there are 

 no suitable breeding-places for these crag-loving species, 



