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The " Bird-life of the Scilly Isles. The Manx Shearwater." 



" To the ornithologist and botanist it would be difficult to find a 

 holiday resort more full of interest than the Islands of Scilly, they 

 teem with bird-life, flowers, ferns and sub-tropical vegetation. 



" This delightful group of islands are situated about 27 miles 

 south-west of the Land's End and 40 miles from Penzance, from 

 which port the passage occupies from three to five hours, according to 

 weather conditions. The group consists of about 200 islands and 

 islets, some of the latter composed of bare granite rocks. Only five 

 of the larger islands are inhabited, viz., St. Mary's, Tresco, Bryher, 

 St. Martin's, and St. Agnes. There is little doubt that in pre- 

 historic ages the most westward of these islands formed the Land's 

 End of Britain. 



" All the islands and rocky islets are frequented by innumerable 

 sea birds, which nest there unmolested, due to the protection 

 afforded them by the Lord Proprietor, Mr. T. A. Dorien-Smith. 

 From an ornithological point of view Annet, or Bird Island, is per- 

 haps the most interesting. It is a small island, being about half a 

 mile in length and much less in breadth, and lies south-west of the 

 group. It is the home of an extraordinary multitude of birds, of 

 which puffins are the most abundant, next in number are the Manx 

 Shearwaters, and then the three species of gulls, of these the lesser 

 black-back is most numerous, then the herring gulls, while several 

 pairs of great black-back gulls are dispersed over the tallest rocks 

 along the shore. Other nesting birds are shags, cormorants, oyster- 

 catchers, ringed plovers, terns, razorbills, storm petrels, rock pipits, 

 and lastly and least in size the common wren. 



" When I first visited this island during the height of the nesting 

 season in 1904, I was astonished at the amazing number of puffins 

 breeding there, I then estimated at least 100,000 were nesting on 

 Annet. If only 40,000 pairs out of the total number brought off 

 their young (a single young one), during the following August, no 

 less than 140,000 puffins, young and old, left this one small island 

 to spend the next six months at sea, scattered somewhere over the 

 ocean, but to what part of the world these birds retire has yet to 

 be ascertained. As I have already stated, the shearwaters ranked 

 next in number, amounting to at least 30,000, as a safe estimate. 

 Of this most interesting and curious bird a few notes may be given, 

 as it is a species which is not commonly observed owing to its 

 crepuscular and nocturnal habits. Formerly it bred abundantly on 

 the Isle of Man, but for some years past has been considered extinct 



