422 BRITISH BIRDS. 



is so steep and rugged. Donald Macqueen supplied me with much 

 information about this island and the Shearwaters that use it for a 

 nursery. He told me that the bird is so common there that he has known 

 a boat's crew (of which he was a member), despatched to the island to 

 collect birds and eggs, capture as many as four hundred Shearwaters in a 

 single night, and that their cries were almost deafening ; he also said that 

 it is one of the earliest birds to arrive at the islands in spring, coming as 

 early as February, and that it is one of the last to leave in autumn. I 

 found the Manx Shearwater nocturnal in its habits, like the Petrels, and at 

 night-time it becomes very garrulous. Donald imitates its cry to a nicety, 

 which may be expressed on paper as kitty -coo-roo, kitty -coo-roo. This 

 note is uttered both when the bird is on the wing and when sitting 

 on its nest. Guided by the note the islanders are able to find the nests 

 with little difficulty, so that they always prefer to go in search of this 

 species at night. Dogs are also trained for the purpose of finding the 

 holes. Donald was well aware how anxious I was to obtain the eggs of 

 this species, and on the llth of June he went off on a private expedition of 

 his own to try and obtain them for me. He returned in the afternoon in 

 triumph, bringing with him a couple of birds and their eggs. Both birds 

 were females. One of the eggs was quite fresh, but the other was so 

 highly incubated that I could not blow it. The next day I accompanied 

 Donald to the cliffs to see the place and search for others. We climbed 

 the hills behind the village, skirted the glen beyond them, and found our- 

 selves on the summit of the cliffs on the south-west side of St. Kilda. The 

 sea was roaring and seething at their base like a huge caldron, the spray 

 dashing in clouds over the rocks. A few Fulmars were to be seen here 

 and there upon their eggs, Guillemots, Razorbills, and Puffins were in con- 

 siderable numbers, and Kitti wakes and Great Black-backed Gulls now and 

 then flew along the face of the cliff. Barefoot we climbed down the 

 rocks to within a few hundred feet of the sea, and finally arrived at the 

 place where Donald made his captures the day before. The eggs were 

 obtained in a steep grassy part of the cliff, where a foothold could only be 

 obtained with difficulty, and where the least false step would hurl the un- 

 fortunate climber into the angry sea below. The Shearwater burrows in 

 the ground like a Puffin or a Petrel, and the holes are sometimes very long 

 and often under large masses of rock, where it is impossible to reach the nest. 

 The holes from which Donald took the eggs were about four or five feet in 

 length, and the nest was merely a little bunch of dry grass. At the mouth 

 of most of the holes there was a considerable amount of the birds' droppings. 

 We found another egg, but no bird was sitting upon it. Soon afterwards 

 Donald ' spotted ; another likely hole, and after half an hour's digging 

 we finally caught a pair of birds ; the hole contained no nest nor egg, 

 and it was evident the birds had only come into it to spend the day. The 



