10 PELECANIDAi 
The nest is made chiefly of seaweed with grasses and 
other herbage, while ‘‘ rags and paper, the straw of wine- 
bottles and pieces of cork are used” (Ussher). The single 
egg has a white crust of lmy material, under which is 
a pale blue shell. The outer coat soon becomes dis- 
coloured. Incubation begins early in May, and the birds 
are reinarkably fearless when hatching, allowing themselves 
in some cases to be touched by the hand, provided their 
haunts are approached quietly. The young are hatched 
naked and with their eyelids closed, and are fed after the 
manner of young Cormorants. 
As a British bird the Gannet breeds on Grassholm, off 
Pembrokeshire, the one colony in Wales: Lundy Island, its 
only breeding station in England, may possibly still accom- 
modate a few pairs. 
In Scotland and the neighbouring islands, this bird 
nests on the Bass Rock, off Haddingtonshire; Ailsa Craig 
in the Firth of Clyde; on Boreray in St. Kilda; on Sulis- 
geir, thirty-five niles north of the Butt of Lewis; and at 
Suliskerry, forty miles west of Stromness (Saunders). 
In Ireland it breeds on the Bull Rock, off co. Cork; 
and more numerously on the Little Skellig, off the coast 
of Kerry. (Plate V.) 
Geographical distribution.—Abroad, the Gannet breeds 
in the Faroes and in Iceland, also on some of the islands 
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. During its peregrinations 
In autumn and winter, it wanders over the North Atlantic 
Ocean as far south as lat. 25° N., extending westward from 
North Africa to Central America. 
DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERS. 
PLUMAGE. Adult male nuptial.—Top of head and back 
of neck, light buff; rest of the plumage pure white, except 
the primaries which are black ; tail, wedge-shaped, the central 
feathers being the longest. 
Adult female nuptial.—Similar to the male plumage. 
Adult winter, male and female.—Similar to the nuptial 
plumage. 
Immature, male and female.-—Head, hind-neck, back and 
wings, dark brown speckled with white; throat and rest of 
neck, breast and abdomen, mottled greyish-brown and 
