Bird Notes & News 



ISSUED QUARTERLY BY THE ROYAL SOCIETY 

 FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Vol. IX.] 



WINTER, 1921. 



[No. 8. 



A Watcher on the Hills 



At the extreme north of the most northerly 

 land within the British Isles, where rocky 

 clifis stand guard against the wild Atlantic, 

 and look towards the Arctic Ocean in a latitude 

 a little nearer to the Pole than are Bergen or 

 Helsingfors or Petrograd, there is a small hut. 

 It is up on the craggy heights, absolutely 

 alone and unneighboured. At the bottom 

 of the cliff, but unseen, is a small coastguard 

 station ; farther away out to sea, on a low 

 islet, is the Muckle Flagga Lighthouse, and 

 this is the last inhabited dwelling in the 

 kingdom, Great Britain's farthest outpost 

 north. It is not a lighthouse that sees much 

 of ocean-traf&c ; the ships that pass in a year 

 could be counted on the fingers. Inland, a 

 mile distant from the little hut, is a rude and 

 difficult road or path towards civilisation, 

 leading ultimately to the " town " of Harolds- 

 wick, where there is not only a shop but a 

 post office which marks the extreme northern 

 limit reached by His Majesty's mails. The 

 whole population of the island, which is 12 

 miles long, does not reach that of a fair-sized 

 English village. 



To the little hut on the hill the postman is 

 not a visitor. The dweller in it receives his 

 letters once a week at the hands of his daughter, 

 who travels the rocky way to bring him these 

 and his newspaper, and his week's supply of 

 food. For the rest his companions are the 

 sea-birds, and the sounds he hears are the 

 clangour of their voices and the ceaseless 

 surge of the sea. The hut is far from being 

 a picturesque cottage posing as a hut ; neither 

 is it a hut de luxe. More nearly does it resemble 

 what the abode of Diogenes may have been, 

 or the sentry-box of a soldier with a door 

 added. It is too small for a bedstead, since 

 a man could not lie in it at full length ; and 

 cooking must perforce be done out of doors. 

 But to this shelter has come every spring, and 

 has remained until early autumn, for thirty- 



three years, one of the most keen and devoted 

 of Bird Protectors in these Isles. 



When first H. Edwardson came up to this 

 north-east extremity of the Shetlands, the 

 collector had marked the isolated region for 

 his own. The birds were at the mercy of the 

 skin-hunter and the egg-clutcher. The most 

 noted of the species, the Great Skua or Bonxie, 

 extremely restricted in its haunts, was reduced 

 to so few pairs that extermination lay in the 

 near future. As long ago as 1835 an anonymous 

 writer of an Ornithologists' Guide found it 

 difficult to get permission to visit their breeding- 

 places on account of the destruction wrought 

 by gunners and collectors. [See Bird Notes 

 AND News, Vol. II.) In the eighties the 

 Edmondstons of Unst determined to save 

 the remnant that was left, and the Silver 

 Medal of the Zoological Society of London 

 was awarded them for so signal a service to 

 ornithology. It was at this time that Mr. 

 Edwardson first became guardian of the birds 

 on lonely Hermaness. For the last 15 years 

 he has been Watcher under the Royal Society 

 for the Protection of Birds. On the ground 

 he " watches " there were, in 1920, 77 pairs of 

 Great Skuas nesting, and also many birds 

 without nests, in place of the five pairs existing 

 when his watching began. As the number on 

 Unst has increased, the surplus stock, wrote 

 Mr. Ogilvie-Grant in Country Life (January 

 24th, 1914), " has gradually spread to other 

 neighbouring islands, where they have smaller 

 colonies, and there can be no doubt that these 

 grand birds are now once more firmly estab- 

 lished." Many other species have also 

 benefited, including Richardson's Skua, Great 

 Northern Diver, Red-throated Diver, Fulmar, 

 and Golden Plover ; and naturaUsts are able 

 to rejoice in two new colonies of Gannets on 

 the cliffs. Nearly half a century had elapsed 

 since a new colony of these birds had been 

 reported. '" The sight from the top of the 



