Abstract
A REPORT on bird life on Ailsa Craig was submitted to Ayr County Council on May 30, the Earl of Glasgow presiding, following a communication from the Scottish Office. The report, prepared by Lieut-Commdr. G. H. Hughes-Onslow, Barr, and Mr. T. Smith, Maybole, recommended that protection be given to guillemots, razor-bills, puffins, kittiwake gulls, and oyster catchers, and also to black guillemots, stormy petrels and fulmar petrels, which have been observed in pairs on the Craig but have not yet nested there, although they have nested on the neighbouring mainland. Protection was not recommended for solan geese or gannets, the stock of which is sufficiently large, nor for the greater black-backed gulls, lesser black-backed gulls, herring gulls, and cormorants, which are so numerous all around our coasts and so destructive to fish and other life as not to merit protection. Regarding the practice of shooting birds from boats, the reporters agreed with the Secretary of State for Scotland that prohibition could not be enforced. The practice, however, should be discouraged. The comparatively few eggs collected by the tenants on the island has no effect on the bird life. The report was adopted for submission to the Scottish Office.
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Bird Life on Ailsa Craig. Nature 131, 903–904 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131903c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131903c0