SOME SOUTHERN CLIFFS. 99 
both barrels before it had struck the lure. He missed it clean and the 
next thing he realized was that Peregrine, Pigeon, and string were careering 
along in safety a quarter of a mile out at sea. As two Peregrines were 
subsequently seen upon the downs escorting three young ones in the middle 
of July, it is to be presumed that these much afflicted birds eluded to the end 
all the efforts made to destroy them, and gained a well-earned triumph over 
their foes. 
With the Peregrines of Culver Cliff and Swanage I have been unlucky, 
and, though I have reason to believe that they still frequent both these time- 
honoured haunts, I have always had to content myself, so far as the Raptores 
are concerned, with the contemplation of their feebler congener, the Kestrel. 
It has been just the same with the Ravens; I have had to put up with the 
Jackdaw, and have never come across a Raven outside Cornwall, but they 
are, nevertheless, reported at times, by trustworthy witnesses, from Beachy 
Head. 
The birds that always present themselves in abundance, whichever cliffs 
you visit, are the Herring-Gulls. The Beachy Head colony is distinguished 
by the unusual simplicity of some of its members. It is now an open secret 
among the boys of Eastbourne College that the Beachy Herring-Gulls fre- 
quently nest upon the ground! ‘The youth who first discovered the fact 
was known to be a good climber, and suspected of a distant connection with 
Ananias. His return one day with a load of Gulls’ eggs, and the announce- 
ment that he had found them on the ground, merely confirmed his reputation 
in both respects, and no one even took the trouble to go and test a statement 
so obviously absurd. 
Some years later several boys, starting on a Sabbath day’s journey, which 
proved most disastrous to the Gulls, re-discovered the secret, and I was myself 
induced to go and have a look at the nests. Needless to say, those I saw 
were empty, the majority being a few feet up the cliff amongst loose boulders, 
though several were actually on the shingle just at its base. Further on, 
near Birling Gap, I saw two Gulls right down on the shore just above high- 
water mark, and suggested that perhaps they were breeding there. To our 
amazement, when we reached the spot, there was the nest with two eggs in it. 
It was mostly of straw, and had a large bit of red flannel woven into it. At 
Culver Cliff and Swanage I have found these Gulls’ nests quite low down, but 
none of them positively on the ground. 
From the foot of Beachy a reef of sunken rocks runs out to sea in a 
slanting line, and at low tide I have shot the Purple Sandpiper at this point, 
and heard of others being taken there. I also one day watched a Kingfisher 
H 2 
