gS SEA-BIRDS 



Sometimes very many more are caught, for the puffin is a very pug- 

 nacious Httle fellow, and when he finds himself caught attacks his 

 neighbour. In this way a general fight is started, during which many 

 are caught. On a suitable day a person with four or five of these 

 snares, which are as many as he can attend to, may kill several 

 hundreds." 



The main killing, of course, was at the autumn collection of young 

 birds. Their necks broken, the young fulmars were tucked, heads 

 through belts, round the waists of the fowlers, young and old, men and 

 women; young gannets were often thrown down to the sea five 

 hundred feet or more from the heights of Stac Lee or Stac an Armin 

 to be collected by men in the boats waiting below. It is interesting to 

 compare the tools of the St. Kilda fowler with those of other North 

 Atlantic seafowlers. In the Faeroes, is found the fleygastong, which 

 looks like a three-foot lacrosse net on the end of a 12-foot 

 pole. It is held by the fowler inconspicuously on the ground, at a 

 traditional catching-place, and swept up skilfully to intercept a flying 

 puffin or fulmar. Faeroemen also drag puffins from their burrows 

 with an iron hook on the end of a two-foot stick, the lundakrok, and 

 also dig out burrows with a trowel of traditional design. The Jieyg 

 does not appear to have been invented or used at St. Kilda, though 

 it was in use in Orkney in about 1808; and, quite independently, 

 the Aleut inhabitants of the Commander Islands, in the North Pacific, 

 developed d. Jieyg, hooped like a giant butterfly net for catching Lunda 

 cirrhata, the tufted puffin. The nearest the Hebrideans got to the 

 Jieyg was a simple pole, with which fowlers smote or attempted to smite 

 auks in mid-air, sometimes with fair results; and the nearest the 

 Faeroeman has got to the St. Kilda puffin-gin (used on land) is a 

 raft set with hair-nooses, anchored in a fiord to snare auks, decoyed 

 by stuffed skins; this device appears to be an Iceland invention. 

 The lundakrok, or puffin-gaff", was never used in the puffin-burrows 

 of St. Kilda, though, as Alex. Ferguson tells us a pointed stick was 

 used to tear the roof of a burrow shown by a dog to be tenanted. 



Egging and young-bird-fowling has also been carried on in Orkney 

 and Shetland, and in Pembrokeshire, though only desultorily in the 

 present century. It was never regarded as a very important source 

 of food. Apart from this the only other traditional fowling in Britain 

 which may now continue is the annual expedition to the gannet 

 colony of Sula Sgeir, which is undertaken by the men of Ness in Barvas, 

 the northernmost parish of the Lewis. The September expedition of 



