184 kerguelen's land. 



a hill-side. I saw two such places where there were a few nests 

 with young and remains of many more. No regular nest is 

 made. The young are brown-coloured. The old birds make 

 a great deal of noise when the young are carried off, but make 

 no attempt to protect them. The brown colour of the young 

 is closely like that of the dead grass in which they lie, and 

 under which they hide on approach of danger. The colour is 

 protective to them ; they are certainly very difficult to see 

 amongst the grass. 



A species of Cormorant {Fhalacrocorax verriicosjis), which 

 occurs at the Falkland Islands and at New Zealand, and which is 

 almost certainly the same bird which we saw at Marion Island, 

 is very abundant about Kerguelen. The birds are very hand- 

 some, especially the male. The chest is white, the back dark 

 brown and black with green metallic tints upon it. At the 

 base of the bill are large orange warty protuberances. 



The birds build on ledges of the cliffs, or on the higher part 

 of steep declivities leading directly down into the sea. They 

 are especially fond of the horizontal grooves and ledges in the 

 cliffs formed where the red earth bands weather out beneath 

 the harder overlying basalt. They are gregarious in their nest- 

 ing, and in places small islands or projecting headlands are 

 stained yellow-white with their droppings, so as to be conspicu- 

 ous from a distance at sea. 



The birds make a compact neat round nest, raised about a 

 foot from the ground, and composed of mud and lined with grass. 



They lay either two or three eggs, pale blue in colour, and 

 covered with a chalky substance, as are all cormorants' eggs. 

 The young are ugly beasts, covered with intensely black down. 

 When there are three in the nest nearly full-fledged they form 

 an absurd sight, since the nest is then not big enough to hold 

 more than one properly, so the greater part of the bodies of the 

 three young projects out, and then, to crown the absurdity, the 

 mother comes and sits on the top of these three young as big 

 as herself. 



An idea of the relations of the various birds to one another 

 in the struggle for existence will be gained from the following 

 incident : I saw a cormorant rise to the surface of the water, 

 and lifting its head, make desperate efforts to gorge a small 

 fish which it had caught, evidently knowing its danger, and in 

 a fearful hurry to get it down. Before it could swallow its 

 prey, down came a gull, snatched the fish after a slight 

 struggle, and carried it off to the rocks on the shore. Here a 

 lot of other gulls immediately began to assert their right to a 

 share, when down swooped a Skua from aloft, right on to the 

 heap of gulls, seized the fish and swallowed it at once. 



