STORMY PETRELS' NESTS.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In the islands off the West Irish Coast your correspon- dent, Mr. Stone, has only found stormy petrels living in burrows made by other creatures, some of the nests being in crevices under large flat stones. Stormy petrels both burrow for themselves, and use the burrows of other creatures, or crevices among stones. I think I had better quote the account given by that interesting naturalist, the late Henry Daven- port Graham :—" Upon these islands [the little wild islets round Staffa and Iona] I have found their nests in such very dissimilar positions that it would make one suppose they belonged to distinct species." At Staffa they breed among the stones, as described by your correspondent. "The beaches are composed of blocks of basalt, about the size of a hat, rugged and angular, and lying loosely together, easily allow the moneelike petrel to penetrate the numerous inter- stices, and to circulate freely a long way below the surface, just as we see a wren, chased by a dog, take refuge in a stone dyke." In Soay, an islet a league south of Iona, are banks " of a soft buttery kind of soil, which cuts, with a spade, like new cheese, and it is in deep burrows made in this muddy soil that petrels make their nests. These banks are perforated by numbers of holes, having the size and appear. ance of rabbits' burrows. If one of these is carefully cut out with a spade, two, or sometimes three, very small apertures, no larger than mouse-holes, are discovered opening out of this large entrance, which serves as a lobby to as many dis- tinct petrel residences." The question raised by Mr. Stone, as to whether the petrels really bore these smaller holes, and perhaps the larger ones themselves, was put to Mr. Graham. There is no doubt that on Soay they did make the little burrows, for there were then no rats on Soay; and as there were no rabbits either, it is possible that they made or
enlarged the big burrows, which had originally been made by puffins and sheldrakes. " The stormy petrels' nests at Soay," he concludes, " hilve exteriorly much the appearance of rabbit- barrows. But on excavating the resemblance ceases. There would scarcely be room for a rabbit to conceal his whole body in one. The hole immediately contracts into one or two very small passages. The entrance halls seem of great age, and are overgrown with moss. The small galleries seem recently made, or at least rebored."—I am, Sir, &c., THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE ON "BURROWING BIRDS."
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