GANNET. 
SULA BASSANA. 
At one season or anotlier Gannets are to be met with on all the seas that surround the British Islands. The 
breeding-stations to which they resort are but few in number, and during the summer months the old birds 
seldom stray to a greater distance than from fifty to one hundred miles from their quarters. According to 
my own experience, the rocks they frequent for nesting-purposes are deserted soon after the young are able to 
take their departure, the latest stragglers, with but few exceptions, leaving their summer haunts about the 
first or second week in October. Eor the following four or five months the birds make their home on the 
stormy ocean, seldom returning to the land unless blown ashore when weakened by the buffetings of continued 
gales. As winter draws on, flocks of Gannets of various ages, the old birds predominating, show themselves 
in attendance on the shoals of herrings in the North Sea, gradually following the fish towards the south. My 
visits to the neighbourhood of the haunts of these birds on the west coast of Scotland having been made, on 
almost every occasion, during spring or summer, I have had but few opportunities of studying their movements 
along that coast in the autumn. 
The Bass Bock, situated a couple of miles at sea in the Firth of Forth off the eoast of East Lothian, is 
the only breeding-station of this species with which I am well acquainted. There are in all, on various 
parts of Great Britain, some half dozen other spots to which the birds resort during the summer ; wind 
and weather, however, have invariably combined to frustrate the attempts I have made to visit any of these 
quarters. 
- The extent of ground occupied by the colony on the Bass has considerably diminished of late years, 
many of the stations formerly resorted to by from forty or fifty up to one hundred pairs on the more accessible 
slopes near the summit being now entirely deserted. The constant interference from sightseers, as well as 
the repeated robbery of their eggs by irrepressible tourists, gradually drove the birds from such exposed 
nesting-quarters. The falling-off in the numbers in consequence of the desertion of these stations is not so 
great as is usually supposed. I have remarked a considerable addition to the nests on the small ledges on the 
north-east face and also near the east cave : these spots are almost inaccessible, even to the regular egg-takers 
(the ropes with which they are supplied being none of the best) ; and no young being collected, the existence 
of these birds is not reckoned bv the tenant of the Bock. 
It is seldom any Gannets are seen in the neighbourhood of the Bass during the winter, and it is not till 
early in March that they begin to collect. Bough and stormy weather, however, occasionally causes them 
to take their departure again for a time, but by the end of the month there is generally a considerable 
gathering. On one occasion (18G7) an egg must have been laid as early as the last week in March, since 
a young bird was hatched on the 10th of May ; this was fully a month sooner than the usual time of 
laying, many of the birds only commencing their nesting-operations after this early youngster had made 
his appearance. 
