58 The Oologists' Record, September L 1923. 



thousands of birds, the most numerous being Guillemots, Puffins, 

 Kittiwakes, Razorbills, Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls 

 more or less in the order named. The Herring Gulls commence 

 to lay with May, the Razorbills three weeks and the Guillemots a 

 month later, so that young Gulls are hatched and hungry when the 

 eggs of the others are fresh. What forms their chief item of food ? 

 Fish during May is more or less scarce so the birds must perforce 

 turn elsewhere for sustenance for their progeny. Young Gulls, if 

 handled will generally bring up their latest meal and this, if examined 

 will almost invariably be found to consist of an unpleasant looking 

 mess freely interspersed with small pieces of the eggs of Guillemots 

 and Razorbills — chiefly the former, owing, no doubt, to their being 

 as a rule the more easily accessible. Herring Gulls are ever on 

 the alert to snatch an unguarded egg. With my own eyes I have 

 seen a recognizable bird take no less than seven in under half an 

 hour and on the cliffs are regular feeding places where hundreds of 

 empty broken egg shells may be seen lying in heaps. The following 

 simple sum gives an alarming result. Take the number of breeding 

 pairs of Herring Gulls as two thousand (a very low estimate). Take 

 the feeding season for their young as thirty days and allow one egg 

 a day to each adult. Four thousand Gulls at an egg a day each for 

 thirty days gives us a total of one hundred and twenty thousand eggs. 

 Add to this the damage done by Great and Lesser Black-backs, 

 Crows, Ravens, Rats, and accidents consequent on the clumsiness 

 of the birds themselves, and it may safely be assumed that 150,000 

 eggs are destroyed yearly on Lundy alone by more or less natural 

 causes. The actual total is, in all probability, fully a quarter of a 

 million. If every collector in Great Britain were to work hard and 

 " filch " every e^g he could get at by fair means or foul not a tithe 

 of that number could be taken in a season. 



For many years Herring Gulls' eggs have formed a large propor- 

 tion of the food consum'ed by the Light-keepers and others on the 

 Island, to whom fresh meat of any kind is a welcome and wholesome 

 luxury. This has now been stopped owing to the ignorant, though 

 doubtless well-meaning interference of a few self-styled " bird 

 enthusiasts " — all of whom, incidentally, take away " just one or 

 two eggs as a momento." The natural and inevitable consequence 

 must be that the Herring Gulls will increase enormously and the 

 Razorbills and Guillemots suffer in proportion until their probable 

 •extermination — a lamentable result which may already be laid 



