( 42 ) 

 THE BIRDS OF BARDSEY ISLAND. 



BY 



N. F. TICEHURST, m.b.o.u. 



PART I 



Prior to 1913 Bardsey would appear to have been visited 

 twice only by people who afterwards gave any account of 

 its birds, and beyond one or two brief references by Ray 

 and Bingley in the 17th and i8th centuries, nothing exact 

 appears to have been known about its avifauna until 1902. 



The comparative remoteness of the isiand and the difficulties 

 of getting to it, owing to the fierceness of the surrounding 

 tides and still more to the uncertainty of getting away again, 

 probably account in a great measure far this neglect. 



In 1901 Mr. O. V. Aplin, after one or more failures in previous 

 years, spent two days. May 23rd and 24th, there, and in 1905 

 Mr. T. A. Coward was on the island from the 14th to the i6th 

 of June. The former published a very full account of the 

 island and the birds he met with in the Zoologist for 1902, and 

 embodied Mr. Coward's notes, where they differed from his 

 o\\Ti, in a subsequent paper in the volume for 1910. Since 

 then it became apparent from the returns sent in by the 

 lighthouse keepers to the Migration Committee of the British 

 Ornithologists' Club that a considerable volume of migration 

 passed the island in spring and autunin, and that a visit 

 at one or other of these seasons, might be productive of useful 

 results in obtaining records in greater detail than is possible 

 for the lightkeepers. With this object in view, I felt that 

 it would be desirable to pay a preliminary visit at a time when 

 practically no migration was going on, so as to obtain at first 

 hand a fairly accurate estimate of the bird-population in 

 summer. I was fortunate enough to be able to cross to the 

 island twice in 191 3 without waiting and without having to 

 make a more prolonged stay than I wished. My first visit lasted 

 from June 12th to the 25th, and I had intended returning on 

 September 3rd. Owing, however, to the intervention of other 

 matters I was unable to reach the island until the 9th, but 



