100 A BIRD COLLECTOR'S MEDLEY. 
diving off these rocks into the little pools left by the receding tide. A Red- 
necked Grebe has been captured not far off, and one can always count on the 
presence of Rock-Pipits, Stonechats, and Wheatears in their season. I am 
told also that this portion of the cliffs is frequented at times by the Black 
Redstart, but I have once only had the luck to find it there myself. 
The Guillemots, which ought to frequent Beachy, but don’t, may be found 
at Swanage, if you go along the Durleston cliffs. From the top you can see 
both Guillemots and Puffins riding on the waves, and even at that distance 
you can distinguish the latter by the light colour of their cheeks. It is a 
strange sight to see these Guillemots leave their ledges. You throw a stone 
over the edge, and immediately out dash the birds, and, forming as they do 
into a wedge-shaped phalanx, almost mathematically correct, they have an 
odd, toy-soldier sort of appearance from above; one might almost think they 
were machines rather than birds. These Durleston cliffs are some of the 
wildest that I know of in the south. One felt that a Peregrine or Chough 
might turn up at any moment, but it was again a case of the Jackdaw and 
the Kestrel. 
The chines that run down the cliffs on the Bournemouth side of Swanage 
are garnished with luxuriant and unusual vegetation. They are frequented 
by certain rare butterflies, and provide a perfect resting place for newly 
arrived Warblers from the south; but I think they lie outside the line of 
the main migration, and they actually held only a few Whitethroats and 
Willow-Wrens. 
When I first sat down to write this chapter I had visions of including 
another most interesting bird amongst the denizens of my local cliff, and as a 
specimen of the way in which one may be deceived by what appears quite trust- 
worthy evidence, I will explain how nearly I came to crediting Beachy with 
the possession of two Choughs’ nests as recently as 1904. In May of that year 
—in fact, the very day after Morton found the Peregrines’ nest—another boy 
entered my study with some eggs in his hand which he had taken from a 
rabbit-hole on the cliff. He suggested that they were rather strange for 
Jackdaws’, and thought perhaps they were Choughs’; I thought so too, 
though I had never seen a Chough’s egg. Rarities often come in couples, and 
I seemed to scent another ornithological sensation. These eggs appeared 
rather more oval than those of a Jackdaw, the blue colour was very pale, and 
the spots small and very faint. The books tended to confirm our theory ; 
but who ever got any positive information out of coloured plates of eggs? 
Thus matters remained 71 ambiguo for two days, when another boy walked 
into my class-room for me to pass judgment on some eggs. He opened a box, 
