MR. .T. H. GURNEY ON IRISH ROCK BIRDS. 
551 
climber, but be must never let go bis rope. This is the part 
which teems most with birds in this huge avine nursery : — Puffins 
(Fralereula arctica), liazorbills (Air a torda ), Guillemots * (Uriu 
troilr), Herring Gulls (Lams anjentatus), Lesser Black-backed Gulls 
(L. fuscus), Kittiwakes (Rissa tridacttjla), Shags (Phalacrocorax 
(jracuhus), and Cormorants (P. carlo). 
The names here put down are in the order of their abundance, 
but in this hive Puffins are much the most numerous, there being 
at least 7000 pairs at the time my son and I visited the island, 
May 18th, 1803, and nearly all of them nesting. The hillsides are 
riddled with Puffin holes, and the sod so undermined as to give 
way upon very slight pressure from above. At the Fame Islands 
Puffin holes are generally about twelve inches below the surface, but 
here they are rather more, and nearly all of them are made by the 
Puffins, I have little doubt. It is beyond all question that Puffins 
are infinitely more numerous at Saltee Island than at the Fame 
Islands, or Flamborough Head, Bass, Ailsa Craig, or the Scilly 
group, but I cannot put the estimate as high as Mr. Seebohm puts 
it (‘ Ibis,’ 1890, p. 405). It is evident their numbers are not 
always the same, vide Thompson’s ‘Natural History of Ireland,’ 
(vol. iii. p. 233), and they may have been especially numerous at 
the time of Seebohm’s visit, for be considers there were GO, 000 
in 1890. Mr. R. Barrington, who knows Saltee well, considers they 
are more numerous still at Skomer on the coast of Pembrokeshire 
(‘Zoologist,’ 1888, p. 3GS). 
Outside the holes sit the demure Puffins, or, if indoors, they 
dash out helter-skelter tripping and catching at every obstacle, and 
are not fairly launched until they have the sea beneath them, — 
indeed, one which, after being carried some distance, was placed on 
the ground seemed quite incapable of rising again. In their windy 
homes it is very necessary for them to extend their webs to help 
* 1 hope I may be pardoned for saying here that the statement about 
Norfolk in Farrell's ‘ British Birds,’ ed. 4 (vol. iv. p. 70), that “ little 
more than forty years ago Guillemots bred at Cromer [in Norfolk] ” 
made, I believe, on my authority, requires correction. It would be more 
accurate to say that judging from the highest point of the Lighthouse Hills 
being named “ Foulness” on old maps, there can be little doubt of Gulls, 
probably Herring Gulls, having nested there. 
