president’s address. 
511 
to the cliffs. These daring egg-stealers are ever on the look- 
out for uncovered eggs on the ledges, and during the course 
of the season a large number must be taken by them and by 
their Black-backed cousins. 
Larus fuscus (Lesser Black-backed Gull). Only a very 
few of these birds nest on Handa, and although there is a large 
colony of Larus marinus on the Stack at the X. E. end of 
the island, the lesser Black-back is not allowed to share this 
impregnable position with them. 
Larus marinus (Great Black-backed Gull). In his ‘ Fauna 
of the North-West Highlands and Skye,’ Mr. Harvie-Brown 
says of this species, “ When I first remember Handa there 
were some twenty to twenty-five pairs of Great Black-backed 
Gulls upon the summit of the Great Stack (300 feet). But 
about the years 1873 and 1876 this sanctuary was, for the first 
time, invaded by two men and a boy from List, at the request 
of the late Mr. Evander Mclver, because these birds were 
becoming destructive, and were increasing in numbers. 
They have never returned to nest upon the Great Stack. 
Indeed in 1903, as shown by photographs taken by Mr. 
Norrie at the ‘ height of the season.’ there were no birds of 
any kind nesting on the flat top at any point visible from 
the land, though the ledges immediately below were densely 
crowded — the Guillemots especially actually jostling one 
another as the photographs also show.” Last year there 
was one pair of Great Black-backs breeding on the top of 
this Stack, as I myself witnessed. 
On the north-east side of Handa there is another Stack, 
about fifty to sixty yards from the main island, and on this, 
which is quite inaccessible to any human being, a large 
colony of Great Black-backed Gulls breed yearly. 
Now of all the marauders that search the moors in the 
nesting season for the eggs and young of the Grouse, the 
chief is, undoubtedly, the Great Black-backed Gull, and 
during my stay at Scourie a gentleman from Buckinghamshire, 
