CORMORANT. 377 



times I have watched these birds taking a " short cut " 

 behind the town. 



At Peak, on the north of Scarborough, a colony of some 

 fifty pairs was in existence before the railway was opened, 

 but they decreased in numbers afterwards. Several years 

 ago a Scarborough man shot eighteen out of twenty nesting 

 birds with a rifle ; the following year none were noted, but 

 a few pairs have since returned. Between Scarborough and 

 Filey several pairs find nesting places ; Mr. Thomas Carter 

 in 1884 observed Cormorants there, and was told by a fisherman 

 that he had seen a nest and three eggs at Scout Nab (Zool, 

 1884, p. 446). I am informed by Mr. J. Fountain of Filey 

 that he had a clutch of five eggs brought to him in the year 

 1902 ; in 1906 there were eight nests. 



Concerning its connection with Flamborough, Pennant's 

 remarks are quoted above. The Cormorant used to be a 

 familiar object near the Headland until the " sixties," but 

 there again senseless persecution has banished it as a nesting 

 species. The breeding sites were near the Lighthouse, the 

 Danes' Dyke, on the Bempton range, and also on Raincliffe, 

 where Charles Waterton found it breeding in 1834, an d 

 descended to examine the nests. Mr. M. Bailey remarks 

 that one or two pairs returned in 1873, and in 1880 there were 

 two nests ; the Bempton climbers say that some four or five 

 birds frequent a certain portion of the cliffs, but there is no 

 proof of their nesting there now. 



The above mentioned constitute all the natural breeding 

 stations of the species, though on the Holderness coast, as 

 Mr. T. Petch and the Rev. A. Donovan inform me, an unusual 

 site has been appropriated on the wreck of a sailing ship, 

 the " Earl of Beaconsfield," that went ashore near Aldborough 

 in 1887.* One of the masts is left standing to warn fishing 

 cobles of the danger to navigation, and on the crosstrees 

 of the main mast several pairs of Cormorants have established 

 themselves ; in 1893 it was reported that a pair had nested 

 and brought off young, and since then they have been regularly 

 observed ; sixteen were seen on 3ist August 1900, and nestlings 



* See Naturalist, Feb. 1903, p. 42. 



