A PARTY OF IMBECILES. 



207 



Everyone has read of the tameness or stupidity of these 

 birds, which are supposed to allow one to take any 

 liberties one likes with them ; but our experience, on this 

 island at any rate, was that they were far more likely 

 to take alarm than either of the other two gannets. They 

 seemed, in fact, as compared with the others, to be 

 developing the first gleams of intelligence. 



The blue faced gannet (S. cyanops) is in our experience, 

 as far as the western Tropics are concerned, more at home 

 on the low sandy cays of the Gulf of Mexico, where we 

 have seen many thousands, but we found many nests of 

 this bird on Orquilla. They were invariably on the 

 ground, in quite exposed positions on the bare summits 

 of rather isolated rocks, or among the loose rocky 

 fragments which covered the steep slopes of similar 

 positions. 



Only the most vigorous and forcible treatment would 

 induce them to leave their nests. Once or twice we sat 

 down among them, taking care to keep just out of range 

 of their sharp serrated bills, and leisurely took notes of 

 the colours of these and of their feet. If they would have 

 allowed it we could have patted their backs. The only 

 notice they took of us was occasionally to stretch their 

 heads in our direction and give a stupid sort of grunt. 

 It seemed to us that this gannet was by far ths most 

 inane of the three, and one seemed to be sitting among 

 a small party of hopeless imbeciles. This bird made not 

 the faintest attempt to line its nest, if such it could be 

 called, the egg being simply laid in a mere depression. 

 Although usually there was not the least suspicion of a 

 stick within yards of their nests, occasionally one of the 

 birds, while brooding over its egg, would pick at an 

 imaginary one, or go through the actions of trying to draw 

 one towards it into the nest. If these futile actions 

 indicated a vague recollection, in what we must perforce 

 call the bird's brain, of some ancestral habit of building 

 in low bushes or trees, it only seems to shew how little 

 the performance of nest building is aided by any deliberate 



