Nesting Places of Gannets 135 



and best-known species, and the Gannet par excellence, is the Common Gannet 

 (Sula bassana), a bird of the coasts of the North Atlantic, coming south in winter 

 to the Gulf of Mexico, and on the European side to North Africa, Madeira, and 

 the Canary Islands. One of the most celebrated of the nesting places is the 

 Bass Rock at the entrance of the Firth of Forth, Scotland. Here Macgillivray, 

 in 1831, estimated that 10,000 pairs were breeding, and this number is said by 

 Hudson (1895) to be still maintained. Although the Bass Rock has been often 

 described and must be familiar to many, I venture .to quote, from Mr. Charles 

 Dixon, a very graphic account of a visit to this spot: "Upon reaching the Bass 

 a few Gannets may be seen sailing dreamily about, but you have no idea of the 

 immense numbers until you have climbed the rugged hill. But when the sum- 

 mit of the cliff is reached the scene that bursts upon one's gaze is one that well- 

 nigh baffles all description. Thousands upon thousands of Gannets fill the air, 

 just like heavy snowflakes, and on every side their loud, harsh cries of ' carra- 

 carra-carra,' echo and reecho among the rocks. The Gannets take very little 

 notice of our approach, many birds allowing themselves to be actually pushed 

 from their nests. Others utter harsh notes, and with flapping wings offer some 

 show of resistance, only taking wing when absolutely compelled to do so, and 

 disgorging one or two half-digested fish as they fall lightly over the cliffs into the 

 air. On all sides facing the sea Gannets may be seen. Some are standing on 

 the short grass on the edge of the cliffs, fast asleep, with their heads buried under 

 their dorsal plumage; others are preening their feathers; whilst many are quar- 

 reling and fighting over standing-room on the rocks." 



Mr. Dixon describes another great breeding place on Borreag, an island about 

 four miles from St. Kilda. "The flat, sloping top of one of these stupendous 

 ocean rocks looks white as the driven snow, so thickly do the Gannets cluster 

 there, and the sides are just as densely populated wherever the cliff is rugged and 

 broken. So vast is this colony of birds that it may be seen distinctly forty miles 

 away, looking like some huge vessel under full sail heading to windward." 



But vast as are these nesting places, they are really insignificant as compared 

 with conditions which prevailed on the Bird Rocks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 less than fifty years ago. The Great Bird is a mass of rock, only about 350 yards 

 long and from 50 to 150 yards wide, which rises abruptly from the sea, with 

 mostly precipitous walls from 80 to 140 feet in height. The Little Bird is three 

 quarters of a mile away; it is lower and much smaller. 



One of the first, or perhaps the first, accounts of the Bird Rocks is by Jacques 

 Cartier, written in 1534. In this he says: "These islands were as full of birds 

 as any meadow is of grass, of which they do make their nests, and in the greater 

 of them there was a great and infinite number of those we called Margaulx 

 (Gannets), that are white and bigger than any geese." Audubon passed these 

 rocks in 1833, while on his cruise to Labrador, and "thought them covered with 

 snow to the depth of several feet." On a closer approach he found that the 

 "snow" was resolved into myriads of Gannets, showing that there had been little 

 diminution in the numbers during the preceding three hundred years. In 1860 

 the Bird Rocks were visited by Dr. Henry Bryant, who appears to have been the 



