132 Wild Life in Wales 



touched, but all more or less plucked, and all, no doubt, 

 provided for her use by her attentive, and soon to be 

 widowed mate, within the short space of certainly not more 

 than forty-eight hours. There were the remains of some 

 other Pipits, which had been eaten previously, about the 

 nest, which contained much incubated eggs. The trap was 

 reset, and in a few days the male Merlin had followed his 

 partner across the bourn, and his body was also fluttering in 

 the breeze that stirred her dainty plumage on the keeper's 

 rail. 



The Merlin is a fairly common nesting bird on all these 

 moors, and being now, happily, recognised as comparatively 

 harmless to game, is not generally much harried. Its most 

 usual nesting site is on flat ground amongst the heather ; 

 but frequently the additional security offered by broken 

 ground, such as the rim of a little landslip, or a stony bank, 

 has superior attractions for it. In Merioneth, I saw several 

 nests upon regular cliffs, in just such situations as a Kestrel 

 might have chosen, and in old Crows' nests, in trees, or 

 bushes. One was upon the flat, heath-covered, top of an 

 isolated rock, about four feet above the adjoining level, and 

 comparatively safe from being trodden upon by sheep or 

 cattle. I believe that the principal reason why nests are 

 so frequently met with in Wales otherwise than upon the 

 ground, is that the hills are often so heavily depastured, 

 that the risk of being trodden upon by stock is one to be 

 seriously taken into consideration. 



The nests made use of in trees were all those of the 

 Carrion Crow (almost the only available nests in such situa- 

 tions), of at least one year old, weathered and worn down 

 till they presented little more than a nearly flat platform of 

 clay, on which the Merlin's eggs were laid. In one case 

 a few slender birch twigs had been added. All the " trees," 

 except one, were the isolated white-thorns so commonly met 

 with along a rocky hillside, and so constantly built in by 

 Crows, in preference to the much safer clifF often closely ad- 

 joining. The highest of these trees would scarcely exceed 

 twenty feet. In the exceptional case, the nest was in a 

 mountain ash (another favourite tree with Crows) near the 



