Fulmar: St Kilda's Bird That Conquered the Coast

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The reasons for the fulmar's spread are debated. Explanations include the growth of fishing and whaling waste as a food source, and possibly changes in ocean conditions.

Much of the history here, including the dates of the spread and the St Kilda harvest, comes from James Fisher's monograph The Fulmar (1952) as summarised by Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey in Birds Britannica (2005). Colonisation dates, survey totals and biology are checked against Mark Tasker's account in the Scottish Ornithologists' Club's The Birds of Scotland (2007), which also draws on Harvie-Brown (1912) and Fisher. Where the two disagree on a date, the SOC date is given and the difference noted.

A tubenose

established The fulmar is grey and white, superficially gull-like, but it has a thick neck, tube-shaped nostrils on top of its bill and a stiff-winged, gliding flight. Like albatrosses, it can smell food over long distances at sea and drinks seawater, excreting salt through its nostrils.

St Kilda's bird

established For centuries St Kilda was the fulmar's only breeding site in Britain. St Kildans harvested young fulmars from the cliffs each August, killing thousands to eat fresh or salted, extracting oil for lamps and medicine, and using the feathers to pay their rent. The fulmar was central to the St Kildan economy until the island was evacuated in 1930.

The great spread

established In 1878 fulmars began breeding on Foula in Shetland. Over the following century, they spread rapidly around the coasts of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland, nesting on cliffs, ruins and even buildings. The cause is debated, but the abundance of offal from fishing and whaling is thought to have helped.

Spitting oil

established Fulmar chicks and adults defend themselves by spitting a foul-smelling oil from their stomachs at predators or intruders. The oil can mat the feathers of attacking birds, sometimes fatally.

Long lives and plastic

established In 1950 a study of fulmars began on Eynhallow, Orkney, one of the longest-running seabird studies in the world. The Birds of Scotland (2007) credits the early work to Vero Wynne-Edwards and the long study that followed to George Dunnet. It showed that fulmars can live more than 40 years; the oldest known reached 40 years and 10 months, and calculations suggest some may pass 50. Fulmars usually first breed at 10–12 years old, and one Eynhallow breeder was caught on a trawler more than 400 km away in the North Sea. Because fulmars feed at the sea surface, they often swallow plastic, and the amount of plastic in dead fulmars' stomachs is used to monitor pollution in the North Sea.

Names: maalie and foul gull

established Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, in Birds Britannica (2005), record that the name "fulmar" is Old Norse for "foul gull", from the oil the birds spit. It came into common English use through Martin Martin, who met the bird on St Kilda in 1697 while serving as steward to the MacLeods. Before that Scottish sailors and fishermen knew it by a Dutch name, mallemuck, "foolish gull", for the ease with which it was caught. That word survives as mallimack or mallie in Orkney and maalie in Shetland.

Food, oil, feathers and rent on St Kilda

established The fulmar was the St Kildans' staple food, and they were still living off its salted flesh a few months before they left in 1930. The main harvest came between about 12 and 26 August, when the single chick is at its fattest. Men seized the birds from behind so they could not spit, and the women drained the oil, about a gill a bird, into dried gannet stomachs. Fisher calculated that until the end, over 100 fulmars a year went into each man, woman and child. As the population shrank, the annual catch fell from around 12,000 birds to about 4,000.

established The feathers paid the rent. In 1847 each family owed about seven St Kildan stone (168 pounds) of feathers of fulmars, gannets and puffins, and about 80 fulmars made a stone. Martin wrote that the oil was "good against rheumatic pains", and the islanders stuffed fat into a gannet's stomach as a cure-all called giben.

Where the colonists came from

established St Kilda was the only British colony from at least medieval times until 1878, yet it was not the source of the great spread. The Foula birds and the colonies that followed are thought to have come from Faroe and, ultimately, Iceland. Birds Britannica points to a difference in behaviour: St Kilda fulmars nest on cliffs and ignore the islands' stone buildings, while Orkney and Shetland fulmars readily nest on old crofts and byres. Fulmars also nest on Tantallon and Dunrobin castles and on buildings in Stonehaven and Banff.

traditional The Foula colony was said to have begun with a dead whale that stranded there with a small flock of fulmars in attendance.

shared Fisher put the spread down to new food, especially whaling and fishing offal. The zoologist V. C. Wynne-Edwards proposed instead a new, better-adapted genetic type arising in Iceland. Neither explanation has been settled. Mark Tasker's account in The Birds of Scotland (2007) leans towards food, noting that the spread coincided with the rise of offshore whaling and fishing, but leaves open whether the birds gained most from the waste itself or from more prey once whales and large fish were removed.

The spread and after: the SOC record

established Not a steady wave. The Birds of Scotland stresses that fulmars did not advance in an orderly front. Foula was colonised in 1878, North Rona and Sula Sgeir by 1887, Clò Mòr near Cape Wrath, the first mainland site, in 1897 and Hoy in 1900. Fowlsheugh followed in 1920 and St Abb's Head in 1921, but Skye only in 1936, four years after the Mull of Galloway. At some sites, such as Bennane Head in Ayrshire, birds prospected for over 40 years before breeding. Archaeological finds show fulmars were caught in Scotland long before they bred away from St Kilda, presumably as visitors.

established Numbers. Seabird 2000 counted about 486,000 apparently occupied sites in Scotland in 1998–2002, almost the whole UK population. The biggest colonies were St Kilda (68,448), Hoy and South Walls (35,858), Foula (21,106), Fair Isle (20,424) and Mingulay (8,424). Fulmars breed in every recording area except Clyde and Upper Forth, including inland at Carrol Rock on Loch Brora, the largest inland colony, and on Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh. After 150 years of increase, the count was slightly down on 1985–88. Tasker linked the fall to less discard and offal since 2000 and to birds drowned on long lines.

established Breeding and movements. Birds start visiting nest ledges as early as November and hold sites by January. The single egg is laid in mid-May, and the chick is guarded until it is 10–15 days old, by which time it can spit oil. It can reach almost double adult weight at about 35 days and fledges at 45–50 days. Scottish-ringed fulmars have been found from Newfoundland and west Greenland to Murmansk and northern Spain. The Scottish population at the end of the breeding season may be at least 1.5 million birds.

An oil that grounds an eagle

established Fulmar oil is a serious weapon. In July 1968 four young white-tailed eagles were released on Fair Isle to restore the species. By the next summer the last survivor was found in a cave, its plumage heavily soiled with fulmar vomit. In 1927 the oil was found to be as rich in vitamin A as cod-liver oil.

• Fulmars are related to albatrosses.
• St Kilda was once their only British colony.
• Fulmars spit oil to defend themselves.
• Some fulmars have bred for more than 40 years.
• Fulmars are used to measure plastic pollution.
• "Fulmar" means "foul gull" in Old Norse.
• St Kildans paid their rent in feathers, about 80 fulmars to the stone.
• Fulmars nest on Tantallon and Dunrobin castles.
• A few pairs nest on Salisbury Crags, close to the centre of Edinburgh.
• A fulmar chick can grow to almost twice its parents' weight before it fledges.
• Fulmars usually wait until they are 10–12 years old before breeding.

• Do not state a single cause for the fulmar's spread.
• Do not say the fulmars that colonised Britain spread out from St Kilda; they are thought to have come from Faroe and Iceland.
• Do not give Hoy's first breeding as 1896 without noting that The Birds of Scotland gives 1900, or call Dunnet Head the first mainland colony; that book gives Clò Mòr, 1897.
• Do not say fulmars are still spreading and increasing; the range had stabilised and numbers had slipped by 2000.