254 Among the Birds in Northern Shires. 



Sea Birds Protection Acts do not apply to any of 

 the islands, possibly, as some readers might say, 

 because it would be utterly impossible to enforce 

 them, not even by removing every living soul from 

 the place. 



We need not linger here at any length upon 

 species that we have already dealt with elsewhere. 

 Such birds as Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins, and 

 Gannets are here in vast abundance, but our space is 

 required for the description of a few birds that we 

 meet with nowhere else in the British archipelago 

 in such numbers. The island of Doon, for instance, 

 so thickly swarms with Puffins that when we land 

 upon it these birds glide down to the sea in such 

 countless hordes that the very face of the hillsides 

 seems slipping away beneath us. As for the Guille- 

 mots, we knew an old St. Kildan, so the story ran 

 in the villaQ^e, who came across such numbers of 

 their eggs upon the cliffs that he was compelled to 

 take off his breeches and turn them into a bag to 

 hold them! But there are more interesting birds to 

 us, perhaps, breeding on Doon, and these are the 

 Fork-tailed Petrels. They have their nests in bur- 

 rows upon the grassy summit of the island. Those 

 we discovered were on the western end, nearest to St. 

 Kilda, and made in the rich soft soil, the burrows 

 some two to five feet in length. At the end of this 

 burrow the Petrel makes a scanty nest of dry gr.ass. 



