2 3 BRITISH BIRDS WITH THEIR NESTS AND Eccs. 



Desertas. Mr. Meade- Waldo describes the Manx Shearwater as sometimes 

 numerous in the vicinity of the Canaries, but only in winter. The hundreds 

 of Manx Shearwaters which Captain Reid identified off Teneriffe in March may 

 well have been birds which bred in more northern latitudes. The Manx Shear- 

 water does not appear to nest in Spain or Portugal, but many colonies are found 

 further north ; indeed the species ranges as a breeding-bird from the North-west 

 coast of France to Shetland and Fseroe. It is only a rare visitor to the coast 

 of Norway, and is absent from the Gulf of Bothnia. Perhaps the most historical 

 nursery of this Petrel was that which at one time existed on the Calf of Man. 



"At the South end of the Isle of Man" writes Willughby, "lies a little 

 Islet, divided from Man by a narrow channel, called the Calf of Man, on which 

 are no habitations, but only a cottage or two lately built. This Islet is full 

 of Conies, which the Puffins coming yearly dislodge, and build in their 

 Burroughs. They lay each but one Egg before they sit, like the Razor-bill 

 and Guillcm ; although it be the common perswasion that they lay 

 two at a time, of which the one is always addle. They feed their young ones 

 wondrous fat. The old ones early in the morning, at break of day, leave their 

 Nests and Young, and the Island it self, and spend the whole day in fishing in 

 the Sea, never returning or once setting foot on the Island before Evening 

 twilight : So that all day the Island is so quiet and still from all noise as 

 if there were not a bird about it. Whatever fish or other food they have gotten 

 and swallowed in the day-time, by the innate heat or proper ferment of the 

 stomach is (as they say) changed into a certain oyly substance (or rather chyle) 

 a good part whereof in the night-time they vomit up into the mouths of their 

 Young, which being therewith nourished grow extraordinarily fat. When they 

 are come to their full growth, they who are intrusted by the Lord of the Island 

 draw them out of the Cony-holes, and that they may the more readily know and 

 keep account of the number they take, they cut off one foot and reserve it ; 

 which gave occasion to that Fable, that the Puffins are single-footed. They 

 usually sell them for about ninepence the dozen, a very cheap rate" ("Ornithology," 

 pp. 333-334). Ray adds that, in spite of the low price which the Shearwaters 

 fetched as food, "yet some years there is thirty pounds made of the young 

 Puffins taken in the Calf of Man : Whence may be gathered what number 

 of birds breed there." 



That the Manx colony of this Shearwater must indeed have been prodigious, 

 becomes most apparent when we reflect that no fewer than nine thousand and six 

 hundred nestlings were sometimes taken in a single summer. It is to be 

 regretted that this memorable colony of Shearwaters, which flourished so 



