454 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



NA TA TORES. PELECA NID^E. 



THE COMMON CORMORANT. 



PHALACROCORAX CARBO. 

 Bailliare-bodhain. Sgarbh-buill. 



THE well-known figure of this conspicuous bird is a never-failing 

 accessory to the coast scenery of many districts of the mainland 

 of Scotland, especially the south-western counties. In Ayrshire 

 and Wigtownshire it is much more common than its ally, the 

 green cormorant, and in these counties is found breeding on rocky 

 precipices overhanging the sea, where it occupies separate ledges, 

 as well as on islands in inland lakes, at a distance of many miles 

 from the coast. There is a large breeding colony every year on 

 Loch Moan, in Ayrshire a place but little visited, and dis- 

 tinguished for nothing but these Cormorants and the sterile scenery 

 by which they are surrounded. In the breeding season of 1867 

 this loch was visited by a fishing party who, finding nothing in the 

 loch itself every fish having been devoured by the birds launched 

 a boat they had brought across the hills, and proceeded to the 

 island, where they built a pyramid of Cormorant's eggs, which 

 they had no difficulty in gathering, to a height of two or three feet, 

 and smashed the entire lot with heavy stones. One of the party 

 an officer in the 33d Regiment informed me that though 

 the eggs were not counted, he was certain of more than a thousand 

 having been destroyed. A similar colony existed a few years ago 

 on the lochs of Mochrum and Drumwalt, in Wigtownshire. In 

 1867, when visiting these lochs, I found the numbers of the 

 Cormorants greatly diminished, and I have since been informed 

 that only a few pairs are now to be found nesting there. Their 

 unwelcome presence had been too much for the resident keeper's 

 good nature; and, indeed, it would be a strong liking for 

 Cormorants that would tolerate even the temporary visits of 

 several hundreds of these feathered poachers where the fishing is 

 supposed to be "preserved." In the autumn of 1870, after the 

 young birds had left the district, I counted nearly fifty groups of 

 these gaunt creatures on the coast between the point below 

 Sinniness and the village of Port- William, a distance of eight or 

 ten miles ; there were from fifteen to twenty in each company, and 



