THE BASS ROCK 237 



It appears that young Gannets, of whose doings T 

 have had less experience, are just as spiteful and 

 quarrelsome as the old ones, for Mr. E. T. Booth in his 

 his " Rough Notes " (Vol. III.) notices that :— 



" The young Gannets at the age of a month or six weeks 

 (their black faces surrounded by tufts of down which 

 strongly resemble white nightcaps) are exceedingly 

 comical, though for the most part ill-tempered and peevish 

 little tyrants. When first they waddle a yard or so from 

 their nest, it is most commonly to pitch into some smaller 

 and more helpless infant, which is not infrequently 

 seized by the back of the neck and shaken in the most 

 pitiless manner. Though the injury they are capable of 

 inflicting on one another is slight, their battles are often 

 attended with fatal results ; one or other, or occasionally 

 both, of the combatants lose their balance, and rolling 

 from the ledge, fall over the precipice and are dashed to 

 pieces on the rocks below. Even the old birds are at times 

 spiteful to youngsters that intrude on their quarters or 

 are imagined to threaten their own offspring. Any 

 unfortunate which has slipped from its nest to some 

 lower ledge during the absence of the parent receives 

 unmerciful stabs from the powerful beak of every adult it 

 approaches, and in the end is either hammered to death 

 or forced over the cliffs. On the north and east sides of 



