436 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



to which it travels in search of food twenty and even thirty miles 

 being a common journey. 



Vast numbers of Puffins were killed on Ailsa Craig previous to 

 the passing of the Sea Birds Preservation Act. The tacksman 

 and his assistants captured the birds chiefly with nets, which they 

 spread at nightfall over the rocks under which the poor creatures 

 were sitting on their eggs or beside their callow young. In the 

 morning, about an hour after sunrise, the men returned for their 

 spoil ; and, after twisting the necks of the fluttering captives, threw 

 the bodies into the sea, where they were picked up by one of the 

 fowlers who attended in a boat for the purpose. Several hun- 

 dreds have been taken in this manner in one day. I have, on 

 more than one occasion, counted from four to five hundred broken- 

 necked Puffins laid out in rows in the hut, waiting removal to the 

 mainland. Towards the close of the season, when the birds had 

 assembled near the summit of the rock, in the manner I have 

 already described, one of the more expert fowlers took his 

 stand in a convenient place, with a pole for striking the birds as 

 they flew past, and, by a dexterous use of this weapon, would 

 sometimes kill upwards of a hundred before quitting the spot. 

 David Bodan, who was tacksman of Ailsa Craig in 1826, under- 

 took for a wager to kill eighty dozen Puffins with a pole in one 

 day, and actually accomplished the feat. This fact was well 

 known at the time, and was lately communicated to me by Mr 

 Anderson of Girvan, to whom Bodan frequently spoke of the 

 circumstance.* Considerable differences are observable in the 



* This extraordinary feat admits of easy explanation when it is borne in mind 

 that Bodan was a very powerful man. Two very good stories are told of him, 

 shewing his great strength and self-determination: On one occasion, during a 

 smuggling raid on the coast between Ayr and Dunure, he was beset by six 

 armed men of the coast-guard, and called upon to surrender. Bodan, however, 

 put his back to a rock, and, taking his assailants one by one as they approached, 

 forcibly seized their guns, hurled the men back, and, after breaking the weapons 

 across his knee, threw the fragments down the cliffs. At another time, during 



his tenure of the Craig, Lord went there for a few days' shooting at the 



goats, which abound on the island. On his return with Bodan and his two 

 favourite dogs, one of the animals was, for some slight offence, unmercifully 

 struck on the head with the butt-end of a gun by his lordship an act of cruelty 

 which Bodan instantly resented by seizing his companion by the neck of his 

 coat and the loose part of his nether garments and sousing him over the boat's 

 side into the sea. A second dip was threatened unless an apology were imme- 

 diately tendered, but there was no occasion to put the threat in force 



