Gannetry at " The Stack,'' Orkney Islands. 633 



A dead calm is required for landing on the Stack, and, 

 although the weather was very fine, and the Duchess of 

 Bedford's yacht was able to go so close as to be within little 

 more than a ship's length, the chief officer decided that there 

 was too much swell to risk going ashore. 



Several good photographs were taken by the Duchess, 

 which have since appeared in ' The Scottish Naturalist ' 

 (1914, p. 176, plates i -vi.) in illustration of an article upon 

 Scottish Islands. The one here selected for reproduction 

 (Plate XXVI.) was taken on the east side and, with a mag- 

 nifying glass, crowds of Gannets can be seen upon it, particu- 

 larly on the northern half. It is only, I learn, on that half of 

 the island, and only upon that portion of it (No. 3) which 

 is above the dark line that Gannets nest, but they also nest 

 upon the highest point (No. 2) of the southern half. 



On May 17 the number of Gannets actually on the 

 Stack was not very large, but nesting-operations were not 

 yet in full swing, and numbers of them which probably 

 belonged to this settlement were observed by the Duchess 

 collecting seaweed and other materials several miles away. 



But on June 19 the scene was quite different, the Gannets 

 had returned, and the bulk of them appeared to be then at 

 home. After careful consideration the Duchess now formed 

 an opinion that 5000 would be a fair estimate of the Stack 

 Gannetry — at any rate, she considers the estimate of 8000 

 given in 'The Gannet, A Bird with a History' (p. 325), to 

 be too high. 



The Duchess has informed me that both the great rocks 

 into which the Stack is divided, and which form two islands 

 separated by a narrow channel, were crowded with Gannets 

 on the arrival of the yacht. This was on June 19, but she 

 particularly remarked that no nests were to be seen on the 

 smaller island, excepting a few at the extreme point. 



On the smaller island, it was noticed that at least one in 

 six of the Gannets was immature — not all young birds of 

 twelve months, but birds of the age of two years, or nearly 

 so, which still retained some black plumage. On the larger 

 islandj on the other hand, the proportion of immature 

 Gannets was much smaller. As regards the over-estimatiou 



