AUTHORS PREFACE 



problems, but because it is a tiny remote rock! Fisher flew over Rockall 

 in 1947. In 1948 Lockley spent twelve days in a trawler fishing 

 within sight of, and on occasion very close to it. In 1949 Fisher sailed 

 there in H. G. Hasler's sixteen-ton yawl Petula, and spent some time 

 investigating it at close quarters. 



One of us has visited Sule Stack, the lonely gannetry thirty miles 

 west of Orkney; and we have enjoyed nearly every island, from 

 North to South Ronaldsay, from Eynhallow to Hoy, and have seen 

 sea-birds in a great range of surroundings. Neither of us is a stranger 

 to the well-named Fair Isle, a great migration and sea-bird station. 

 We know the Shetland gannetries of Noss and Hermaness, where 

 thousands nest — though forty years ago there was none. We have 

 stood at the top of Foula's Kame, and gazed twelve hundred and twenty 

 feet to the auk-scattered sea below. We have sailed in and out, and 

 round about, the stacks and rocks and skerries, and voes and geos 

 of straggling Shetland, and seen many a fine cliff, from Sumburgh 

 in the south to Saxa Vord in the north; from Noss on east to Papa 

 Stour on west. \Ve are no strangers to Fitful Head, or Hillswick, or 

 Ronas Voe, or Burra Firth ; or to Hascosay, the bonny isle of Whalsay, 

 Fetlar, Bressay or Mousa; or to the Out Skerries, nearest British 

 land to Norway. 



Perhaps in Ireland we have not seen all we should; but one of 

 us knows the windy corner of Kerry, the end of the world, where the 

 pure Irish survives on the Blasket, and where the fulmars now glide 

 and play round Inishtearaght, Inish-na-Bro, and Inishvickillaun; 

 and where the gannets mass white on the serrated pinnacles of the 

 Little Skellig, second gannetry of the world. He knows, too, the little 

 gannetry of the Bull, and its neighbour the Cow, and other crags of 

 Cork from Cape Clear Island and Dursey Island east to Great New- 

 town Head. In Clare the cliffs of Moher bring sea-birds to nest among 

 many beautiful flowers. We have seen the bird-colony of the Great 

 Saltee in Wexford, and that of Lambay not far from Dublin. One of 

 us knows the many fine, high cliffs of Mayo and Sligo, and some 

 headlands of the maze-coast of Donegal; the other has watched 

 fulmars haunting the curious inland cliffs of Binevenagh in Derry, 

 and hunted out the basalt coast of Antrim and the Giant's Causeway. 



Between us, then, we have seen much of the coast of our glorious 

 islands; but we have not seen nearly enough, and we hope to see what 

 we have already seen, all over again. And we would see the west side 

 of the ocean we have grown to love, and compare it with the Britain 



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