THE FROZEN SHORE 29 



playing and soaring for half-an-hour, they flew out 

 over Alum Bay and round by the Needles, perhaps to 

 seek a site for a nest, which the ravens are said always 

 to choose on New Year's Day. Beyond the beacon lies 

 the still more awful precipice of Sun Corner. The 

 cliff there is not perpendicular, but overhanging, and 

 the voice of the gently heaving sea climbs so slowly to 

 the summit, that it seems as if the sound of the breaker 

 that the eye can see would be wholly lost on its way to 

 reach the ear. On the highest point is an upright 

 pinnacle of chalk, connected with the main line of the 

 cliff by a narrow ridge, on which a man might sit 

 astride. On the summit of the pinnacle, a peregrine 

 falcon was quietly basking, looking inland, with its 

 back to the sea and the sun. The bird was so tame, 

 that it was possible to approach it and notice the 

 colour of its plumage with the aid of the glasses. It 

 was a young bird ; and it may be hoped that for once 

 the nest has escaped the hands of the cliff-climbers, 

 who rob it annually. Ten years before, according to 

 a record of a visit to these cliffs which the writer 

 possesses, a peregrine was sitting on the same pinnacle, 

 and was next day trapped by a fisherman. Further 

 to the east, where the coast is lower, and long stretches 

 of sand and rocks are exposed at low-water, the shore 

 was covered with birds, each kind strictly limiting its 

 feeding-ground to a particular belt of shore. Nearest 

 the cliffs was a bank of sea-weed, covered by a flock 

 of chattering foraging starlings. Next this a strip of 

 dry sand, cut up by black malodorous streams which 



