26 THE GANNET 



breeding season ; therefore, however widely gannets may 

 range in little flocks of six to sixty individuals, following 

 shoals of herrings, pilchards, and other gregarious fish, 

 they always reassemble in spring at certain stations, to 

 which they have adhered with inflexible constancy from 

 immemorial time. Rooks may be driven by persecution 

 to desert their ancestral trees ; many a dovecote has been 

 cleared of its legitimate inhabitants by the intrusion of 

 starlings ; but gannets will perish to the last bird rather 

 than abandon the rock which has become consecrated as 

 the birthplace of countless generations. 



Of nine breeding colonies of gannets in the British 

 Isles, one is off the coast of England, Lundy Island; one 

 off that of Wales, Grassholm ; two are in Irish waters, 

 and five in Scottish namely, the Bass Rock ; Ailsa 

 Craig ; St Kilda ; Suleskerry, about forty miles north of the 

 Butt of Lewis ; and the Stack, to the west of Stromness. 



Estimates of number applied to such a restless popula- 

 tion as inhabits these colonies cannot be otherwise than 

 loose; but there appears to be convincing evidence of 

 considerable diminution since 1831, when Macgillivray 

 reckoned that 20,000 gannets had their home on the Bass 

 Rock alone. In 1869 it was calculated that the birds on 

 that station had been reduced to 12,000, and that Ailsa 

 Craig harboured a similar number; but in 1877 the Ailsa 

 colony had fallen to 10,000. On the other side of the 

 Atlantic, the reduction has been far greater than with us, 

 for the fishermen of the Gulf of St. Lawrence view these 

 active and voracious birds as the worst kind of vermin. 

 It must be admitted that gannets are pretty diligent and 

 effective competitors with man in the consumption of 

 fish ; but even so, the supply of herrings, at least, seems 



