8 The Bird Life of an Outer Island. [Sess. 



Gull was by far the most abundant species — I think he is 

 always the most abundant at littoral colonies, where both 

 Herring and Lesser Black-back are present, except perhaps 

 at the Fames, where the Black- back, for some reason doubt- 

 less connected with human protection, manages to pre- 

 dominate. Both are undesirables in the cliff-world, thieves 

 and assassins, making life a burden for their weaker brethren 

 on the ledges beneath ; and yet an observer, knowing no better, 

 might have thought that the gulls took upon their ample 

 shoulders the care and protection of the whole cliff colony, 

 so great and vehement was the pother to which they treated 

 an inquiring human. They heaped abuse on our innocent 

 heads every hour we spent on the cliffs. A Herring Gull 

 would greet us with an imprecation ere we had arrived within 

 sight of the ledges, and a Lesser Black-back would accompany 

 us two hundred yards inland with a host of maledictions 

 when we departed homewards. They believed whole-heartedly, 

 did the gulls, in invective ; our indifference never disheartened 

 them — the same gulls were as ready to shriek curses at the 

 same particular spot on our tenth visit as on our first, and 

 our continued presence only incited them to finer and, doubt- 

 less, profaner efforts. And you must remember that many 

 of these gulls were not perturbed because we were venturing 

 upon ground sacred to their nests and their downy offspring. 

 An odd pair of gulls might be found nesting in splendid 

 isolation at any part of the cliffs where there was a suitable 

 site for them, but the bulk of the Herring and Lesser Black- 

 backs confined their breeding operations to a few well-defined 

 tracts, where the upper rocks were broken into broad flat 

 shelves and supported a considerable growth of grass and 

 sea-campion. It was business the gulls were after when we 

 stumbled into their midst, the business maybe of appeasing 

 the insatiable appetites of their families half a mile distant, 

 but business which brought nothing but ill to the rock-fowl, 

 — business so ruthless and high-handed that their indignation 

 at our intrusion appealed to us as something remarkably akin 

 to hypocrisy. In fact as the evidence — the chance evidence 

 which we encountered during our cliff scrambles, we did not 

 seek for it; if we had it was only necessary to persuade a 

 young gull to disgorge his last meal, an easy matter in my 



