278 BY THE DEEP SEA. 



every-day and all the year round features of the shore on 

 certain parts of our coast. In other places it is only seen at 

 the period of migration or in the winter months. It is a 

 larger and darker bird than the well-known Meadow Pipit (A. 

 pratensis), and its hind claw is more curved and not so long. 

 The bill is black, with a little yellow at its base, and the tail 

 dark. 



It prefers a spot where the cliffs are not too precipitous, or 

 where they exhibit sloping terraces grown with thrift and 

 samphire, in which the Rock Pipit may find a suitable little 

 cave* for its nest, with a beetling brow in the shape of an 

 overhanging piece of rock to protect it from the rain. There it 

 will make its nest of grass, hair-lined, and deposit in it the five 

 pretty green-grey eggs with evenly distributed reddish-brown 

 specks. I have often sat on Cornish rocks and watched the 

 Rock Pipit on the shore below, running along the lines of 

 washed-in weeds, and evidently picking out small mollusks 

 and shore-hoppers ; I have found its nest also in the hollows 

 of steep cliffs difficult of access. 



The Chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus] was at one time a 

 common bird in England, but it is now restricted to Ireland, 

 the Isle of Man, parts of Wales, and south-west England. 

 Cornwall was formerly regarded as its headquarters, and it 

 was variously known as the Cornish Chough, Cornish Daw, 

 Cornwall Kae, Market-jew Crow, as well as by other names 

 not connected particularly with the Duchy ; but so great have 

 been the onslaughts upon it that the Cornwall County Council 

 has had to get the Home Secretary to declare it a protected 

 species, with a price upon the head of the miscreant who 

 dares to take its eggs in the Western Duchy. Its plumage is 

 black, with purple and green reflections, and its bill and legs 

 bright red. It fortunately nests in difficult places in high 

 cliffs, where it makes the nest which Yarrell describes as built 

 of " sticks lined with wool and hair," in which it lays " four or 

 five eggs of a yellowish-white colour, spotted with ash-grey 

 and light brown." 



