42 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



a rock which projected from a very steep bank and 

 was covered with grass. Some of this grass hung 

 down in front and formed a screen. It was sub- 

 stantially made of short bits of dry grass and moss, 

 and contained only a few feathers. There were four 

 young, whose feathers were just beginning to grow ; 

 when they opened their mouths, crying for food, I 

 was able to see that there were two black spots at 

 the back of their tongues." 1 



As you lie up here among the flowers, watching 

 the Accentor or listening to his pleasant song, a 

 distant cawing may be heard far up on the pre- 

 cipitous rocks. Cawing I must call it for want of a 

 better word, but it is more like the voice of a Jack- 

 daw than that of a Kook, and reminds me for a 

 moment of the thousand daws of the chalk cliffs in 

 Dorset. Then you will see, far up in the blue above 

 the rocks, one or two black specks ; then half a 

 dozen, then twenty ; and meanwhile the foremost 

 are descending and nearing you, sailing with a flight 

 hardly less graceful than a gull's, until they alight 

 by the side of some great patch of melting snow, 

 and probe the watery edges with their bright yellow 

 bills. In such places there are insects in abundance, 

 and such as will be good food for the young Choughs 

 up yonder ; for some thousand feet higher, on the 

 precipices at the end of the Schafthal, Mr. Playne 



1 Zoologist, August 1893. 



