authors' preface 



we know, and other sea-bird countries we have seen — the tuff and 

 lava and basalt of Iceland, the basalt crags of Faeroe, the dissected 

 plateaux of Spitsbergen, the misty cliffs of Bear Island, the drowned 

 coast of Norway with snow-coated Lofotens and dark fjords like 

 corridors, the friendly limestone of Sweden's Gotland, the skerry- 

 guard of Stockholm and Uppland, the dunes of Denmark and the 

 Dutch islands, the red sandstone cliffs of Heligoland (the only cliffs 

 in western Germany), the chalk and granite of north France, and the 

 islets of Brittany; the benign, sunny slopes and little scarp-precipices of 

 the Channel Islands where one of us lived for a while; the warm, 

 shearwater islands of the Portuguese Berlengas, the Madeiran Desertas, 

 and the Salvages; and the gulleries and terneries of the Camargue, 

 within the Mediterranean. 



This book is not a comprehensive survey of a problem based upon 

 a lifetime's experience nor yet a full bibliographical compilation. 

 We have paused in field-work simply to offer this book as a stimulant, 

 which we hope very much it will be. We intend it as no more. It is a 

 statement of some of the facts concerning the wonderful sea-birds of 

 the North Atlantic, and of some of the interesting problems connected 

 with their lives and their evolution. It is intended to exhibit the ignor- 

 ance of ornithology as much as its knowledge, and to draw attention 

 to what needs doing as much as to what has been done. It is our wish, 

 we must also add, not only to take the reader with us — if he will come — 

 to the east side of the North Atlantic where the sea-birds are more in our 

 personal experience, but also to the western seaboard, w^hich is zealously 

 worked by the ornithologists of the United States and Canada and 

 described by them with such enthusiasm and thoroughness in numerous 

 books and journals. One of us has corrected the galley proofs of this 

 book in an aircraft bound for North America, on the beginning of a 

 journey among the sea-birds of that continent; as he left Britain, 

 Ailsa Craig flashed white with gannets in an April evening sun, and 

 the first bird he saw in the New World, through Newfoundland clouds 

 next morning, was a gannet. 



For help, encouragement and information we have more friends to 

 thank than we can mention. Our search of the literature has been 

 chiefly pursued in books belonging to the Zoological Society of London, 

 the Alexander Library at Oxford, the Royal Geographical Society and 

 the London Library, and we thank G. B. Stratton and \V. B. Alexander 

 particularly. Among those who have given us valuable help or 

 information (they have no responsibility for the use we have made of it) 



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