SEA-BIRD NUMBERS AND MAN 97 



the Gambir, Soay and Boreray), each of which is probably larger than 

 any other puffinry in Britain; and they dug and dragged the birds 

 out with a long arm. The men made horsehair nooses stiffened with 

 bits of gannet-quill at the end of tapering bamboo poles from 6 to 

 15 feet long, which they gently edged over the necks or under the feet 

 of puffins and razorbills sitting about on turf or rocks, and of fulmars, 

 guillemots, and even gannets on their eggs; and snatched the bird 

 to them. Skilled workers could catch several hundreds of birds a 

 day this way. Gannets were stalked asleep before dawn, and seized 

 by the neck. One method of catching guillemots early in the season, 

 when they came to the ledges but had not laid, is described by the 

 accurate MacKenzie: "Two men will go to a likely place and as soon 

 as the birds have left the rocks in the twilight one of the men will 

 lower the other by a rope to the ledges which they have observed to 

 be most thickly peopled. Then he has to wait all night while the birds 

 are away feeding. Just before the earliest dawn he hides himself as 

 close to the edge of the rock as possible, and holds up something white, 

 as a handkerchief, on the rock beside him. The first comer seems to 

 think that this is a still earlier arrival, and settles down beside it. 

 It is at once pounced upon, killed, and held up in a sitting position 

 in order to induce the next comers to settle down beside it. They 

 return in little flocks from half a dozen to a dozen, and out of each the 

 fowler may catch two or three, or if lucky even more. He goes on 

 in this way till it gets so light that no more will settle. Sometimes he 

 may not be successful, but in general he can catch from sixty to seventy." 

 It was usual to try this dodge only once at each favoured ledge; the 

 fowler went the rounds of the traditional stances. Other accounts 

 show that they sometimes covered their heads with a large white 

 sheet, to simulate a whole guano-white ledge rather than the flash- 

 white underparts of a sitting bird. 



MacKenzie describes the special St. Kilda puffin-snare or puffin- 

 gin (used for this bird alone): "It consists of about a fathom of stout 

 cord to which hair nooses, about nine inches long, are fastened at 

 intervals of three or four inches. This is stretched out on any boulder 

 or ledge which the birds are at the time frequenting, and fastened at 

 the ends. The nooses along the sides are then carefully opened out 

 to a diameter of about an inch and a half. The birds which have been 

 disturbed are soon back again, and, being restless little fellows, it is 

 not long before some of them have got their feet entangled in the nooses. 

 Three or four are generally caught thus before the snare has to be reset. 



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