We need not linger here at any length upon species that we have already dealt with elsewhere. Such birds as Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins, and Gannets are here in vast abundance, but our space is required for the description of a few birds that we meet with nowhere else in the British archipelago in such numbers. The island of Doon, for instance, so thickly swarms with Puffins that when we land upon it these birds glide down to the sea in such countless hordes that the very face of the hillsides seems slipping away beneath us. As for the Guillemots, we knew an old St. Kildan, so the story ran in the village, who came across such numbers of their eggs upon the cliffs that he was compelled to take off his breeches and turn them into a bag to hold them! But there are more interesting birds to us, perhaps, breeding on Doon, and these are the Fork-tailed Petrels. They have their nests in burrows upon the grassy summit of the island. Those we discovered were on the western end, nearest to St. Kilda, and made in the rich soft soil, the burrows some two to five feet in length. At the end of this burrow the Petrel makes a scanty nest of dry grass, moss, and roots, upon which it lays a single egg, white in colour, faintly marked with dust-like specks of brown and gray. Sometimes a nest is dispensed with altogether. We caught some of the Petrels upon their nests, which, when released, flew about in a dazed sort of way as if unaccustomed to the light. These Petrels are chiefly crepuscular or nocturnal in their habits, and during the daytime not a bird will be seen. The St. Kildans pay little or no attention to such small birds, and possibly the Fork-tailed Petrels had remained here undisturbed for ages, for we are not aware that Bullock obtained any eggs from this colony when he discovered the species in the British Islands upwards of eighty years ago. Bullock, we might mention, came very near the honour of discovering this bird absolutely, for he was only anticipated by a year by Vieillot.
St. Kilda is indeed the grand head-quarters of our British Petrels. All the indigenous species breed there, and in greater numbers than they do anywhere else. The Stormy Petrel is common enough, and doubtless breeds on every island in the group. Its habits are almost precisely the same as those of the Fork-tailed Petrel, and its egg is similar in colour, only much smaller in size, as the bird is itself. But the grand colony of Manx Shearwaters is perhaps of more general interest; the bird breeds in many other parts of our islands, although nowhere in such numbers as it does here. Soay is its grand head-quarters, but great numbers breed in suitable localities on every other island in the group. This Petrel is also nocturnal in its habits, lying close concealed in its burrow during the day, coming out at dusk to search for food over the surrounding sea. St. Kildans say that the Manx Shearwater is one of their first bird visitors in spring, and amongst the last to leave in autumn. Probably the real fact of the case is that the bird haunts the islands throughout the year. Towards the end of May this Shearwater commences to lay. It provides a scanty nest of dry grass at the end of the burrow it has excavated, and here it lays a single white egg. Like the Owls and the Nightjars, this bird becomes active at nightfall. The Shearwaters then leave their burrows in thousands, and the grassy island becomes a scene of activity, birds coming and going in the gloom, and their cries filling the air. The "Scrapire", as the St. Kildans call this bird, is a favourite article of food with them, and large quantities are caught at night, when parties of men visit the birds' haunts and knock the poor Shearwaters down with sticks or drag them from their holes.