210 SEA-BIRDS 



fish, even well-grown mackerel, gurnard and garfish (the spike-nosed 

 eel-like garfish is doubled over and presented to the chick middle first.) 

 The heads of such fish are always partly digested, as they lie head down- 

 wards in the stomach of the adult — this makes them soft enough for the 

 chick to swallow, although the tails remain still quite fresh and hard. 

 How the turning round of the ejected fish is accomplished, during the 

 act of transference from the gullet of the adult to the gape of the nest- 

 ling, so that the hard spiny fins and tail enter the stomach of the young 

 bird with their needle-like points trailing backwards, does not seem 

 to have been studied. But we have watched captive young gannets 

 swallow large fish tail first occasionally. 



Gannets feed their chicks usually in the early part of the day, on 

 the return of one of the parents which has been at sea all night. 

 While in camp for a week in June 1934 at Grassholm we noticed that 

 at night each nest contained one adult only, with the egg or chick. 

 There was no activity of any kind during the midnight hours when 

 the whole colony was silent and asleep (as in booby, pelican, cormorant 

 and man-o'-war colonies). Early in the morning parties of gannets 

 began to fly in from the sea; many seemed to have arrived earlier and 

 were discovered to be floating on the water near the island at dawn. 

 Some feeding takes place at odd hours throughout the day, but the 

 young gannet is not fed at all frequently, probably not more than two 

 or three times during twenty-four hours. 



At six weeks of age the nestling gannet has begun to grow feathers, 

 the speckled or so called "pepper-and-salt" plumage of its first winter. 

 Soon it appears larger than the adult, on account of the amount of 

 fluffy white down still adhering about the feathers. Its head is now 

 too large to enter far into the gullet of the adult when it is being fed, 

 and the whole process of feeding at this stage looks remarkably 

 awkward, almost violent, giving the appearance of the young bird 

 stabbing the open mouth of the adult, and of the adult trying to 

 swallow the beak of its child. It does not seem surprising therefore 

 that the adults give up this uncomfortable feeding process gradually; 

 and about the eleventh week, or a few days later, the parents cease 

 altogether to feed their chick. In its turn the chick appears to show no 

 further interest in the adults, although some of these (it is not proved 

 that these are the parents, however) may continue to visit the colony 

 long after the last chicks have become independent. At this stage the 

 young gannet is excessively fat, as the wild-fowlers of the last century 

 well knew. This was the season when the men of St. Kilda, as recorded 



