220 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



the Shag on the north side of the Firth prior to 1890. There 

 is, therefore, little room for surprise that its visits to our waters 

 should be few and far between. 



GANNET. 



Sula bassana (L.). 



Dr. Heysham had only seen one specimen up to 1796, and 

 naturally considered it rather an uncommon bird. Bearing in 

 mind the comparative shortness, to a Gannet, of a flight from 

 Ailsa Craig to the Cumberland coast, the species is not so often 

 seen as might be expected ; indeed it is seldom noticed on the 

 English Solway east of Maryport, though adult birds are 

 occasionally washed up dead at Silloth. George Bell informed 

 the younger Heysham in a letter of November 2, 1842, that 

 Gannets were then common on the Whitehaven coasts, and 

 frequently taken. The present generation of fishermen tell me 

 that they have not seen them in any numbers of late years, nor 

 do they generally fall in with them unless they are fishing a 

 few miles from land. Immature birds are decidedly in the 

 minority. Curiously enough, this oceanic species often occurs 

 far inland. A Gannet was caught asleep in a field between 

 Hayton and Allonby in November 1874. Mr. Jackson caught 

 a very handsome three-year-old Gannet when crossing the fells 

 from Martindale to Mardale in October 1886. A fine adult 

 bird was captured in a gill near Crossfell in September 1885, 

 and taken to Joseph Walton of Garrigill. In October 1891 a 

 young Gannet which had been captured near Curthwaite was 

 recorded in a Carlisle paper as a ' Bittern ' ; while a similar 

 individual, shot at Arnside about the same time, was chronicled 

 in a Kendal newspaper as ' A fine Great Northern Diver.' 



Order HERODIONES. Fam. ARDEWJE. 



HERON. 



Ardea cinerea, L. 



The Heron has always been numerous, if somewhat local, in 

 Lakeland, and at one period seems to have been in considerable 



