290 THE KITTIWAKE GULL. 



St. Abb's Head, and in commenting upon it Mr. Purves 

 noted that " the Kittiwake has deserted the Skelly and 

 Foul Carr Cove or Eib, and now chiefly resorts to the 

 Eamparts. This is since they were so much tormented by 

 the large Newcastle steamboats calling in and firing at them. 

 They are also fewer in number." Under date August 1857, 

 Mr. Hardy writes in his MS. Notes : " Kittiwake dwindling 

 away at St. Abb's Head ; this is supposed to be on account 

 of their being so much shot at by the London and Leith 

 steamers." On the llth of August 1886, when I was on a 

 visit to St. Abb's Head for the purpose of marking on the 

 twenty-five inch Ordnance Survey Map of the coast the 

 breeding stations of the various birds which are found there, 

 Mr. Kobert Thorburn, fisherman, Coldingham Shore, 1 in- 

 formed me that the Kittiwake reared its young numerously 

 on the perpendicular precipices of the Cleaver Eock long 

 ago, but that none had bred about St. Abb's Head for the 

 last twenty years. It would thus appear that between 

 1857 and 1866 the Kittiwake gave up nesting there. 



This species is now found in small numbers on the 

 coast of Berwickshire during the winter and early spring 

 months, 2 and is occasionally seen on the Tweed, but it is 

 not observed in the inland districts of the county frequent- 

 ing the grass fields or ploughed land, like the Common and 

 the Herring Gulls. Its great breeding stations in the 

 vicinity are the Bass Eock and the Fame Islands, where 

 it arrives in vast numbers in spring. After the nesting 



1 Mr. Thorburn told me that he was seventy-seven years old, and had fished 

 about the Coldingham coast all his life ; also that he had accompanied the 

 "Sappers and Miners," when they surveyed the coast at St. Abb's Head about 

 1857, to tell them the names of the rocks. He appeared to be well acquainted 

 with the breeding places of the birds about the Head. 



2 Mr. Hardy notes under date 25th March 1874 : " A number of Kitti wakes 

 associated in a party with Common Gulls on the Pease Sands." Hist. Ber. Nat. 

 Club, vol. vii. p. 279. Also on 21st December 1874 : " Kittiwake seen passing on 

 the sea banks." Ibid. vol. vii. p. 282. 



