CHAPTER 3 



SEA-BIRD NUMBERS AND MAN 



EVERY BIRD has a history, which is a tale of adventure and fluctuating 

 fortunes, of success, or of failure; for every bird, like every other 

 animal, suffers change. In any study of the life of birds, and the place 

 of birds in nature, an understanding of their numbers is fundamental. 

 Since most sea-birds are social animals, and nest in colonies in 

 wild and beautiful places, their numbers can often be studied very 

 closely, and with a great deal of enjoyment. So enthusiastic is the 

 average amateur bird-watcher about visiting sea-bird stations, and 

 'collecting' islands, that it is safe to say that every important sea- 

 bird colony on both coasts of the United States (not Alaska), and on 

 those of the Faeroes, Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, 

 Germany, Finland, and Sweden is known to somebody who can dis- 

 tinguish its birds from each other; and most of those in Norway, Spain, 

 Portugal, Iceland and St. Lawrence-Canada are known. The sea-bird 

 stations of Greenland, thanks to a tradition of accurate observ^ers 

 from Giesecke to Bertelsen and Salomonsen, are better known than 

 those of the Canadian Arctic, Newfoundland, the U.S.S.R., China, 

 and perhaps even Japan. Those of the Antarctic and Subantarctic, 

 and South America, are perhaps better known than those of the tropical 

 Pacific. Probably a very adequate list of the sea-bird stations of the 

 United States (excluding Alaska) or of north-west Europe could be 

 compiled by some bibliophilic ornithologist with access to all the local 

 as well as national bird and natural history journals of those countries. 

 Such lists would be useful documents ; they would have to be carefully 

 dated, because of what history tells us of the fortunes of animals, and 

 of change. Fisher has recently compiled a dated list of all the fulmar 

 colonies of the world, and we have both, at different times, compiled 

 lists of the world's gannetries. It is surprising how certain it is possible 

 to be of being complete, within reasonable limits. Thus after the publi- 

 cation of his Report on the igj8 survey of black-headed gull colonies 



