42 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 



The bird under notice makes no nest of any 

 kind, but simply drops its pair of eggs on the bare 

 rock, in holes and crevices of sea cliffs or beneath 

 boulders just above high-water mark. Its eggs 

 have occasionally been found in holes in walls and 

 under crags eighty or a hundred yards away from 

 the sea. 



The eggs are white, faintly tinged with blue- 

 green or creamy buff blotched, and spotted with 

 dark and chestnut brown and ash grey. They 

 cannot well be mistaken for those of any other 

 species when seen where laid by the bird. 



HARRIER, HEN. 



FBOM one cause or another this Harrier appears to 

 be gradually going in the same direction as the 

 Marsh and Montagu, towards extinction. 



MacGillivray reported it as " rather abundant 

 in North and South Uist in 1841 ," and Gray found 

 it " very common in the Outer Hebrides as recently 

 as 1871. " Its decline must have been fairly rapid 

 since the latter date, at any rate, for this year the 

 keepers in North Uist only knew of a single pair 

 breeding in the island, and my friend Mr. Macalfish, 

 at Loch Maddy, used to see the male come over 

 his garden about the same hour almost every day 

 in search of food. We took up our stand one 

 morning in the bird's line of flight, and waited 

 for hours together to get a sight of him, but un- 

 fortunately he did not take his usual route on 

 that particular occasion. This habit of hunting the 

 same country in the same direction, and at about 

 a similar hour every day, has been commented 



