102 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BI1WS. 



suitable age and condition for the table, the Manx 

 Shearwater is likely to hold its own for some time 

 to come as a British breeding species. 



When at St. Kilda in 1896, I met with it 

 breeding in very limited numbers on the Doon, 

 below the ground occupied by the Puffins and 

 Fork-Tailed Petrels, and my brother secured the 

 picture on the opposite page of a burrow from 

 which a bird and its egg had been taken a day 

 or two before our arrival. The hole had been 

 scraped out of the rich vegetable mould between 

 boulders of rock, and it and others in which birds 

 were in all probability sitting at the time were 

 surrounded by luscious grass, of a most delicate 

 green, and sorrel. I was anxious to go over at 

 night in order to listen to the guttural melody 

 of the brooding birds, which the natives told me 

 could generally be heard, but unfortunately an 

 opportunity never presented itself. During my stay 

 I investigated the islands of St. Kilda and Borrera 

 with some degree of thoroughness, but never found 

 a single nest. I had, on account of the freshen- 

 ing of the wind and the rising of the sea, unluckily 

 to leaye Soay (where Dixon says a large colony 

 breeds) too suddenly to do much, except catch a 

 young St. Kilda Wren and get a fine sight of 

 the wild sheep on it. 



Within the last decade, my friend Mr. Harvie- 

 Brown has seen flocks aggregating thousands all 

 feeding together in Scottish waters ; and in " A 

 Fauna of Argyll and the Inner Hebrides," pub- 

 lished in 1892, gives a most interesting account 

 of his visit the previous year to what he regards 

 as the " great headquarters " of the species in 

 Scotland. The colony, which is situated in Eigg, 

 occupies five or six miles of cliff face, some of 



