A VISIT TO SKOMER ISLAND. 435 



Shearwaters were visible, being all asleep in their burrows. 

 Anyone walking over the island might have little notion of the 

 vast population slumbering just under his feet, in the deepest 

 rabbit-earths, or in holes of their own excavation. Since the 

 Sea Birds Preservation Act was passed, the rabbits on Skomer 

 have greatly diminished in numbers ; the annual take, which 

 used to be 9000, is now barely 3000. As the rabbits are the 

 chief produce of the island, this represents a serious loss. The 

 Herring Gulls are the greatest depredators, being for ever on the 

 hunt for young rabbits ; and the Puffins and Shearwaters are 

 continually worrying the breeding rabbits in their burrows, 

 thus contributing their share to the mischief. The Shearwaters 

 do not emerge from their holes until dark. At 10 p.m. there 

 was no sign of them, but going out at midnight the whole 

 island seemed alive, and the air vocal with their unearthly 

 wailing cry. 



From the sky above, from the ground at one's feet, and from 

 below the ground, the noise proceeded, and was compared by a 

 friend to the cry of jackals at night, and it seemed to us that the 

 words " Come over the wall," " Come under the wall," rapidly 

 repeated in a sibilant whisper, would represent the sound which 

 surrounded us. It was not a deafening noise, far from it; rather 

 a soft, weird, and unearthly chorus, resembling nothing we had 

 ever listened to before. It was too dark to see the birds, unless 

 they flew directly overhead, but we could hear them fluttering ' 

 close by, and feel our cheeks fanned by their wings. They were 

 also to be heard beating along the ground at our feet ; for, like 

 the Puffin, the Shearwater is unable to rise unless it is on 

 sloping ground, or is assisted by the wind. A setter we had with 

 us caught the birds and brought them to our hands uninjured as 

 fast as we could take them from her ; and it would have been 

 easy in this manner to have captured hundreds, or aided by a 

 lantern to have run down the birds and knocked them over with 

 sticks. One night we were told that the farm servants actually 

 destroyed a multitude in this manner, and that the bodies 

 of the birds were ploughed into the ground as a dressing for 

 wheat. Alas, poor " cockles" ! to what vile uses did they come. 

 N.B. "Cockle" is the local name for the Manx Shearwater, from 

 the noise the bird makes when its nest is dug into. The night 

 we spent upon the island the wailing of the birds was incessant 



