The Land of the Hills and the Glens 



assumed the full breeding plumage. The dunlin nests on the 

 island of which I write, but those seen along its coast in 

 May are making their way to northern nesting-grounds, 

 perhaps within the Arctic Circle. Though a bird, during the 

 nesting season at all events, of similar habits to the common 

 snipe, the dunlin does not lay her eggs till the snipe's young 

 are active birds. Indeed, on May 4, when I visited some 

 boggy ground where quite one hundred pairs of dunlin nest 

 every season, the birds, except for one or two individuals, 

 had not even arrived, much less commenced the duties of 

 rearing their offspring. 



Golden plover were still here in flocks during the early 

 part of May, on their way to their northern breeding- 

 grounds, the birds strikingly handsome in their full nesting 

 plumage. 



The peregrine falcon is a bird which suffers such perse- 

 cution at the hands of keepers that I was glad to dis- 

 cover on May 8 a nest of this handsome hawk containing 

 three eggs. The nesting site was the summit of a high sea 

 cliff, and the male peregrine, at my approach, betrayed the 

 fact that he had a mate near by flying off his perch on the 

 rock and uttering his harsh note of alarm repeatedly. The 

 hen bird then emerged, mingling her cries with those of her 

 mate, and I was able to reach the nest, somewhat unex- 

 pectedly, with little or no climbing. The eggs were laid 

 under a stone just on the top of a sheer cliff, and at my visit 

 the young birds were chipping the shells. 



It was on May 3 that I saw and heard the first corncrake, 

 an early date for this migrant. There was as yet little or 

 no grass, so the bird had perforce to hide itself in a clump 

 of gorse bushes. By the end of the month the fields of 

 growing grass resounded throughout the night with the 

 grating notes of many corncrakes. 



Curlew and redshank commenced to brood during the 

 first week of May, and one nestful of curlews hatched out 

 on May 29. Though the eggs were chipped as early as the 



190 



