LLANDDWYN 43 



much of the ceaseless quarrelling to be due to some 

 uncertainty as to their respective owners. Heavy 

 rains had fallen before our visit to the island, and 

 many of the eggs were lying completely submerged 

 in water-filled hollows in the rocks, a calamity that 

 must have happened often enough before, but 

 apparently without teaching the bird's prudence in 

 the selection of their nesting sites. The eggs, 

 generally two, and at times three, were laid either 

 upon the plain gravel, or a slight nest had been 

 constructed of dead stalks to receive them. They 

 showed variation from pale-green to the deepest 

 brown, the markings also varying from heavy blotches 

 to comparatively fine spottings. The date was the 

 24th June, and there were as yet no young hatched. 



At whatever hour one might awaken during the 

 night, the voice of the Tern could be heard ; and it 

 is safe to say that, from the time of their arrival in 

 spring until that of their departure in autumn, Adar 

 Island knows not ten minutes silence by night or a 

 moment's peace by day. 



Having made the acquaintance of the Tern at 

 home, we cast our eyes beyond Llanddwyn to the 

 great tidal marsh for which the narrow river Cefni 

 draining through it offers an excuse rather than a 

 reason. For the Cefni is but a thread of water that 

 just avails to prevent one passing, from east to west, 

 across the Malldraeth Sands. 



Bicycling along the sands . . . . Is bicycling 

 on sand, so obvious an expedient in itself, rare in 

 practice ? Some people who watched us cross the 

 great stretch of sands forming Red Wharf Bay 

 a passage of half-an-hour that would have occupied 



