186 BIRD LIFE IN WILD WALES 



smaller, might well (putting the nest aside) have been 

 mistaken for Linnet's. 



After this I set out for the C. hills, finding, just as 

 I started, a Yellow Bunting's nest in a wild rose- 

 bush. I went up through the G. rocks and New 

 House wood, where the Sparrow-hawks are nesting, 

 and so to the Black Bog. Here the usual Curlews 

 and Peewits were soon seen and heard, and a little 

 further on, by a tiny rivulet, I flushed a pair of Snipe, 

 shortly after finding their nest under a tuft of cotton 

 grass, containing three very beautiful eggs. I could 

 hardly have missed finding this nest, because there 

 was very little rough herbage about, such as Snipe 

 love for nesting purposes ; moreover, I had noticed 

 this pair here all through the spring. On through 

 another boggy bit of ground I flushed another brace, 

 but found no nest, though I had a great hunt 

 for it. 



At the " Marten-cat " rocks I at last discovered 

 the Kestrel's " nest." Oddly enough, the male was 

 on the nest, and he never left his charges until I was 

 almost on top of him, whilst climbing down the 

 cliffside, which was very precipitous. This eyrie was 

 in a very snug hole in the rock, and contained three 

 young just hatched and two eggs on the point of 

 hatching, which reposed on a plentiful bed of 

 "pellets," ejected, of course, by the parent birds. 

 Although I stopped close by for some time, I saw 

 nothing of the female, so can only presume that she 

 has come to grief, for though both sexes of this 

 species incubate, yet at the present stage of affairs 

 one would have expected to find the female on the 



