AUTHORS PREFACE 



islets and stacks; both the lonely coast of Ross and its islands — Priest, 

 Tanera, Glas Leac Beg and many others, where Frank Darling first 

 worked out his theory of bird sociality by studying herring-gulls. 



In the North Highlands we have watched the birds of the Black 

 Isle Coast, and those of Easter Ross where the coast continues north 

 of the Cromarty Firth to Tarbat Ness. In East Sutherland Dunrobin 

 Castle itself becomes a bird-cliff, because fulmars are now prospecting 

 it— and there we have seen them ; in West Sutherland we have travelled 

 nearly the whole wild coast, in instalments spread over several years; 

 we know the crags of Stoer; the Torridonian sandstone precipices of 

 Handa, the best bird island in Sutherland; the lonely cliffs on each side 

 of remote Sandwood Bay — and Eilean Bulgach opposite which only 

 half-a-dozen naturalists have visited; the high promontory of Cape 

 Wrath, and the higher cliff of C16 Mor to the east of it — the highest 

 mainland cliff in Britain — where the guillemots on two-hundred-foot 

 stacks must be observed from six or seven hundred feet above; Fair- 

 Aird Head and the home cliffs and caves of Durness ; the huge white 

 crags and stacks of Whiten Head ; the complex of islands and cliffs 

 that stretches thence to Caithness, whose headlands too, we know, 

 and their birds — Holborn Head, Dunnet Head, John o' Groats and 

 Duncansby Head, Noss Head, Berriedale Ness. 



In many years, and many boats (as well as from aircraft), we have 

 enjoyed the Outer Hebrides, from North Rona (which many call 

 the loneliest place to have been inhabited in Britain) to Barra Head. 

 We have seen the seals and birds of Rona, and counted the gannets 

 of its lonely neighbour Sula Sgeir; and have hunted out the coast 

 of the Lewis, and much of Harris. One of us has slept some nights on 

 the Shiants, among the rats that may be affecting the population of 

 that vast remote puffinry; and has several times threaded the maze 

 of the Sound of Harris, and eight times has been to St. Kilda, whose 

 unsurpassed cliffs and towering stacks have to be seen to be believed 

 (and are sometimes then not believed). We have traversed the Long 

 Isle — North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra — and many of 

 its attendant isles, and carried on to sail close under the cliffs of 

 Mingulay and Berneray, which for remoteness, grandeur and person- 

 ality are rivals — much overlooked rivals — to those mighty precipices 

 of St. Kilda, Conachair, Soay and Boreray. 



One hundred and ninety-one miles west of St. Kilda, and about 

 three hundred miles from the mainland of Scotland, lies a tiny rock 

 which has been a magnet for us both — not only because of its bird- 



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