138 SEA-BIRDS 



that these dispersive birds simply voyaged in no particular direction 

 until they found adequate supplies of food. Some of the Norway 

 recoveries however may have been due to the equinoctial gales from 

 south-west. 



It is now known that a proportion of our gull population simply 

 attaches itself to the inshore and shallow sea fishing fleet and follows 

 it throughout the winter wherever it goes. (This does not apply so 

 much to the lesser blackback, which is a more truly migratory species — 

 p. 250.) Gannets, which are also partly parasitic on the fishing fleet, 

 stay round the British coast when they are adult ; they do not normally 

 feed within sight of their gannetry and from the ringing returns can 

 be shown sometimes to wander quite close to other gannetries. The 

 adults especially are truly dispersive. It was thought that the fulmars, 

 Leach's and storm-petrels were dispersive because they disappeared 

 into the ocean when their breeding season was over, and were seen to 

 be scattered fairly evenly over certain parts of it. Unfortunately we 

 have as yet learned little from marking storm- and Leach's petrels, 

 but the first important results from marking fulmars have now come 

 to hand and they show that some at least of the young fulmars from 

 West Greenland and from St. Kilda go to the Newfoundland Banks 

 within a few months of fledging. This must be regarded as a migration, 

 and it would certainly appear that the young fulmar, like the young 

 gannet, is migratory, even if its parent is dispersive. 



The gannet is seldom seen beyond the Continental shelf — i.e. the 

 hundred-fathom line. The many ringing recovery records analysed 

 by Thomson (1939) show that the marked winter movement of gannets 

 south from Britain along the Biscay, Portugal and West African coasts 

 is composed of adults and young, and that it is predominantly the 

 young (particularly those in their first year) that go on to Africa; they 

 reach Senegal. The Abbe Parquin (Mayaud, 1947) came across a 

 huge concentration of gannet flocks on 16 January 1940 off the coast 

 of Morocco from Casablanca to Mogador. This "he estimated at 

 more than 100,000 individuals," which approaches half the world 

 population! Gannets have been seen, in numbers that cannot in all 

 cases be regarded as casual, in the Adriatic, and even off Egypt and 

 Palestine. 



To the north the disperal of the gannet sometimes reaches distances 

 of a thousand miles or more from its breeding-colonies. It visits the 

 coast of Norway up to the Lofotens (often in winter) and casually 

 to Varanger Fjord and beyond. It has been seen fishing near Bear 



