84 



BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



THE 



GULLS AND TERNS ON WALNEY, 

 LANCASHIRE (1905). 



By F. B. Kirkman. 

 THE following notes are the result of a visit paid 

 to the protected gullery at South End, Walney 

 Island, on May 30th, followed by a month's stay 

 from June 15th to July 13th. Nearly every day of 

 my stay I spent several hours in the gullery with 

 note-book and camera, and became therefore fairly 

 intimate with the life of its inhabitants. 



Walney Island is a sandy strip about eleven miles 

 in length, stretching along the north shore of 

 Morecambe Bay over against Barrow-in-Furness. 

 It is by an order of this County Borough that the 

 birds and eggs on Walney are protected. At the 

 south end there is a large colony of Black-headed 

 Gulls and a ternery. These can be visited only by 

 special permission, and are, for a greater part of 

 the season, under the charge of a watcher. My 

 attention was almost exclusively confined to the 

 gulls and terns, and it is with their progress that 

 this paper is alone concerned. I noted, however, 

 the presence of the following : sheld-duck, oyster- 

 catcher, wheatears (abundant), ringed plover, sky- 

 lark (rare in Lakeland, Walney being, perhaps, 

 the only spot where it is abundant), tit-lark, stock- 

 dove (one pair), all breeding. Among casual later 

 visitors were the pied wagtail, lapwing, curlew, 

 black-backed gull, and young herring or common 

 gull. 



When I visited the island on May 30th the gullery 

 was alive with young birds running in all directions, 

 and it was difficult to put one's foot down without 

 treading on eggs. This promise of a good season 

 was not fulfilled. Though the gulls were laying 

 from about April 23rd till the end of June, the per- 

 centage of eggs that resulted in young gulls able to 

 fly freely and quit the island must have been very 

 small. There were several reasons for this : — 



(1) The jackdaws from Piel Castle (Pile of 

 Fouldrey) spent their days in the gullery feasting 

 on the eggs. When caught flagrante delicto by the 

 infuriated mother gull they simply fled till the 

 pursuit ceased, and then recommenced pilfering. 

 I have no doubt that the rats, judging from the 

 mischief they did in the ternery, were not behind 

 the jackdaws in their consumption of eggs, but it 

 was not easy to detect traces of their presence in 

 the bent-covered ground where the gulls had their 

 nests. 



(2) In the early part of the season I was struck 

 by the number of chick gulls lying dead and 



flattened out. As there were few visitors, and as 

 these walked with care, I am inclined to believe 

 that the chicks in question owed their death to -the 

 boots of moonlight marauders, but have no certain 

 proof. The gullery was not watched at night, and 

 was therefore at the mercy of anyone who chose to 

 enter. 



(3) From the middle of June to the time I left 



the ground was strewn with the dead bodies of 



young gulls of all ages. It was difficult to stand 



anywhere without seeing about a dozen. Here and 



there the more conspicuous white feathering" of 



adult gulls showed that the young were not the 



only sufferers. The explanation is probably to be 



found in the following passage from Macpherson's 



" Fauna of Lakeland," p. 425 : — 



" An interesting topic, and one deserving of wider 

 attention than it appears to have received hitherto, 

 is that of the epidemics which occasionally attack 

 whole colonies of birds in the breeding season. 

 The black-headed gull is a typical sufferer. In 

 certain years the percentage of deaths among the 

 unfledged birds is so high at Ravenglass that 

 wherever you go in the midst of the gullery you 

 find the bodies of the birds in all stages of putre- 

 faction. 



(4) Several young met their death in the gravel 

 pits. In one I found ten bodies of birds, all of 

 which must have been well able to fly. Several 

 I rescued. Once in the pit, they seemed quite 

 unable to fly out. 



(5) Lastly, there can be little doubt that, each 

 day, perhaps half a dozen paid with their lives 

 the penalty for trespassing in the terneries. For 

 reasons not clear, the Arctic and Common terns 

 attacked no bird but the young gulls, and, judging 

 from repeated observation through a powerful field- 

 glass (Goerz gx), they only actually struck the 

 latter when on the wing. As the young gulls have 

 not learnt the corvine device of turning over and 

 presenting beak and claws to an enemy swooping 

 djwn from above, they are, when in the air, abso- 

 lutely defenceless. More than once I have seen 

 them drop to the ground after an attack, but in 

 no case struck dead. Sometimes the wing was 

 broken ; but, in the case of the one bird I was able 

 to catch after its descent, no mark of violence was 

 apparent. Still, on the following day, I always found 

 the bird thus attacked lying dead on the spot to 

 which I had marked it down after the attack. 



When attacked on the ground, the young gull 

 invariably adopted the same tactics : as soon as 

 the tern's swoop began, it lifted its head and opened 

 a wide beak of protest, but rapidly ducked as the 

 enemy swept over it and up. It employed the 



