226 HAUNTS OF THE SHEARWATEU 



It is at the south-west end that the Gannets are 

 massed, crowding together to nest in numbers incon- 

 ceivable. Two or three solid acres were, at a low 

 estimate, at the time of our visit in May 1899, as white 

 with living birds as if covered with snow, though 

 scarcely an egg had been then hatched, and outlying 

 parties of twenties and hundreds were quartered on 

 every available flat space around. The breeze which 

 blew to the boat from the tops was heavy with the 

 smell of musty oil, and when a shot was fired, the sky 

 was clouded with black-tipped white wings carrying, 

 nearly amidship, skiff-shaped bodies pointed fore and 

 aft, without any perceptible lessening of the numbers 

 of the sitting birds. 



From the lower ledges Gulls rose by hundreds, and 

 from every crack and crevice streamed in unbroken 

 lines Puffins, Guillemots, and Razor-bills. 



Beside many of the nests, which are slight, and built 

 mainly of a black seaweed, lay mackerel, some fresh 

 and scarcely marked, others cleanly sliced, the Gannet, 

 unlike the Cormorant, which bolts its catch whole, 

 preferring its fish filleted. The tax on the neighbouring 

 shoals must be heavy. But as from 80,000, to 90,000 

 mackerel had, we were told, been landed daily from 

 fishing-boats at Valentia alone in the week of our visit, 

 there is, perhaps, no great danger of an immediate 

 extinction of the species. 



It is a curious instance of the apparently capricious 

 likes and dislikes of birds to particular places, which 

 are still as great a puzzle as ever, that the many 



