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ON THE BREEDING-SEASON AND CLUTCH OF 

 THE STEGANOPODES. 



(Cormorant, Shag, and Gannet.) 



BY 



The Rev. F. C. R. JOURDAIN. 



Only three members of this Order figm-e on the British 

 List, and some of the facts concerning their reproductive 

 habits are sufficiently interesting to deserve a fuller 

 treatment than they have received up to the present in 

 the standard books on the habits and nidification of 

 British birds."^ For the sake of convenience each species 

 wiU be treated separately. 



The Cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo carbo (L.). 



The Cormorant is tolerably generally distributed round 

 the coasts of the British Isles except where the shores 

 are too flat to provide suitable breeding-places. It is 

 a more adaptable species than the Shag, and some of 

 its nesting-places are at considerable distances from the 

 sea. Thus the weU-known Bird Rock {" Craig-y-deryn ") 

 near Towyn in Merioneth is quite four miles from the 

 sea; in Wigtownshire there is a large colony on Castle 

 Loch, and in Ireland there are breeding-colonies on 

 islands in fresh-water lakes at considerable distances 

 inland, the nests being situated sometimes on the ground 

 and at other times in trees. There is not a great deal 

 of variation in the breeding-season of this species. 

 Probably the earliest British nesters are those on the 

 south coast of Ireland. Mr. R. J. Ussher (Birds of 

 Ireland, p. 153) states that in co. Waterford he foimd 

 several nests with from one to three eggs on April 4th, 

 1896. This was, however, an exceptionally early date, for 

 in the Zoologist, for 1890, p. 436, the same writer gives 

 April 15th and 16th as the earliest dates and also states 

 {t.c, 1886, p. 93) that most of the eggs are laid about the 



* For example, in Yarrell (ed. IV., Vol. IV., p. 152) it is merely- 

 stated with regard to the Shag that the eggs "are laid from May 

 to June ' ' ! 



