Black Guillemot - 1894

Uria grylle

A century ago there were a few Black Guillemots resident on the Pembrokeshire coast. Colonel Montagu, writing in his Ornithological Dictionary in 1802, says : " We have seen it rarely on the coast of Wales near Tenbeigh (sic), where a few breed annually; but nowhere else that we could find from thence to St. David's."

None now breed south of the Isle of Man, and the bird has deserted Anglesea, and the neighbourhood of Llandudno, in North Wales, where it was reported to occur by Pennant, equally with our coasts. There is no specimen of a Pembrokeshire Black Guillemot now existing that we know of in any collection ; nor is the bird, in virtue of a chance straggler floated to our shores, at the present day included in any list of the birds of the county. The Black Guillemot is very abundant off the north-west of Scotland, and is a species that does not wander far from its habitat ; specimens reported from the Bristol or English Channels are few and far between.

Mathew M.A. 1894, Birds of Pembrokeshire and it's Islands