6o 



ST. PAULS ROCKS. 



NEST OF NODDY AT ST. PAULS ROCKS. 



cemented together by the birds' dung, and the nests having 

 been used for ages, are now solid masses, with a circular 

 platform at the summit, beneath which hang down a number 



of tails of dried seaweed. 

 The older nests project 

 from the cliffs on the 

 sheltered sides of the 

 rocks, like brackets, hav- 

 ing been originally com- 

 menced, as may be seen 

 by the complete gradua- 

 tions existing, by a pair of 

 birds laying an egg on a 

 small projecting ledge of 

 rock and adding a few 

 stalks of weed. 



It is only the stronger 

 and more vigorous nod- 

 dies that are able to 

 occupy and hold posses- 

 sion of a nest of this 

 description. There are 

 only a limited number of 

 such on the island, there not being cliffs enough to accommo- 

 date more.* The island being somewhat over-populated, a 

 great many noddies have to put up with the bare flat rocks as 

 breeding-places, and there they lay their eggs in any slight 

 hollow or chink. They are plucky birds, and the old ones 

 sometimes make dashes at the head of an intruder who goes 

 too near their nest. They had so little fear of man, from want 

 of experience of his cruelty, that we could have caught any 

 number of them with our hands. 



In vast abundance, all over the rocks, crawls about a crab 

 {Grapsus strigosus), the same as that already noticed at the 

 Cape Verde Islands. This crab has been referred to by nearly 

 all visitors to the rocks. It is far more wide-awake than the 

 birds, and keeps well out of reach, being thus of some diffi- 

 culty to catch. The crabs are all over the rocks, every crevice 

 has several in it. 



You are fishing, and you have put down at your feet a nice 



* The two species of noddy occurring at the rocks are so nearly alike, 

 that I did not notice at the time that there was more than one species 

 present ; a fact which 1 have since learnt from Mr. Howard Sanders' 

 paper — "On the Laridae of the Expedition," Proc. Zool. Soc, 1877, pp. 

 797, 798. Possibly the birds, which make bracket-like nests, are of one 

 species only, and those which build on the ground, of the other. 



