GANNET.
SULA BAUSANA.
AT one season or another Gannets are to be met with on. all the seas that surround the British Islands. Tho
breeding-stations to which they retort are hut 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 alter the young are able to
take their departure, the latest stragglers, with but few exceptions, leaving their summer haunts about tho
first or second week in October. Por the following four or five months the hirds make their home on the
stonny ocean, seldom returning to the land unless blown ashore when weakened by the bulb-lings of continued
gales. As winter draws on, flocks of Gannets of various ages, the old birds predominating, show themselves
iu attendance on the shoals of herrings in the North Sea, gradually following the lisli 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 lew opportunities of studying their movements
along that coast in the autumn.
The Bass Ruck, situated a couple of miles at sea in the Firth of Forth off the coast of East Lothian, is
tho only breeding-station of this species with which I am well acquainted. There are in all, on various
parfs 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 1 have made to visit any of these
The extent of ground occupied by the colony on the Bass has considerably diminished of late years,
many of tin' stations formerly resorted to by from forty or lifty Up to one hundred pairs on tile more accessible
slopes near fbe summit being now entirely deserted. The constant interference from sightseers, as well as
Hie repeated robbery of their eggs by irrepressible tourists, gradually drove the birds from such exposed
nesting-quarters. The falling-oil' in the numbers in consequence of the desertion of these stations IS not so
great as is usually supposed. 1 have remarked a i siderable 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-lakers
(the ropes w ith which they are supplied being none or tho best); and 110 young being collected, the existence
of these birds is not reckoned by the tenant of tho Rock.
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. Rough and stormy weather, however, occasionally causes them
to take their departure again for a time, but by the end of the mouth there is generally a consjd'TABLE
gathering. On one occasion (18117) an egg must have been laid as early as the last week in March, since
a young bird was hatched on the ltJth of May; this was fully a month sooner than the usual time of
laying, many of the birds only commencing their nesting-operations after lids early youngster had made
his appearance,