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



it, principally because of the great weight of the pole, but a 

 stalwart native adept could kill a score or two of birds in an 

 hour. With a lighter and more efficient instrument, such as a 

 bamboo rod fitted with a triangular net, which is something 

 like what they use in the Earoes, the business could be done 

 with half the expenditure of energy and twice as much pre- 

 cision — at least I have C.'s authority for thinking so. The 

 more common method of fowling practised on the Scottish 

 isles, however, is by means of a rod about 13 feet long, fitted 

 at one end with a small hair noose, which requires to be 

 cunningly slipped over the head of a bird as it sits on the 

 nesting ledge. In some islands even this instrument has been 

 improved by numerous little artifices, but in our island, of 

 course, it retains its simplest and most incompetent form — 

 and it was for such that C. guilefully bartered several ounces 

 of tobacco, and with such, altered and put in order as only 

 C.'s craft knew how, that he indefatigably kept our larder 

 stocked with fresh Guillemot and Puffins, so that the great 

 hunger was stayed and happiness reigned. 



From the village itself it was remarkable how little of bird- 

 life presented itself to view, how little indication there was of 

 the wealth of life which gathered every summer on the island's 

 verge. A few gulls, perhaps the magnificent pinions of a 

 Great Black-back sweeping overhead, a few Shags, and maybe 

 a Black Guillemot paddling and diving in the bay, would be 

 all the sea-fowl life visible, and the inland forms were not 

 obtrusive. There was a Mavis who sang every morning from 

 the roof of one of the hovels ; there was likewise a Blackbird, 

 but I cannot recollect that I ever heard him sing ; there were 

 assertive Starlings ; there was the persistent drone of Common 

 Buntings among the cultivated patches behind the crofts ; and 

 there was, day and night, unceasing, the harsh iteration of a 

 Corncrake, " shearing the mellow quiet with a blade of ragged 

 edge." We were moved to rout this gentleman out several 

 times, as we failed to find the reason for so much loquacity. 

 Kavens — we gauged them at three families — and Hooded 

 Crows sometimes joined the gulls, and huilted over the village,, 

 but we generally saw these black- and-piebald marauders, as 

 we came and went from the cliffs, perched on the wide fences 

 of earth and stones by which each crofter or squatter jealously 



