46 BIRD LIFE IN WILD WALES 



taken to put a stop to the indiscriminate looting 

 which goes on yearly in your last refuges. Two or 

 three pairs, to our knowledge, attempt to rear their 

 young in a certain locality we know, but with little 

 success. Shortly after this Mr. Pike and the trusty 

 keeper join us, the latter with the lunch, which forth- 

 with we discuss on a convenient slope half-way or 

 thereabouts up the cliff; and then a strange thing 

 happens, for from some hundred feet above us is 

 borne to our ears what must surely be the ominous 

 croaking of a Raven ; and so it proves, for, lunch 

 despatched, we scale the rocks and are rewarded by 

 seeing a Raven leave her nest in a well-nigh unap- 

 proachable precipice. However nil desperandum ; "aut 

 corpus corax aut m/iil" is our motto, and eventually, 

 after a severe climb, we are sitting on a great grey 

 slab of rock, hanging over the valley many hundred 

 feet below, inspecting the nest, which is built in a 

 veritable hole in the rock, under an enormous boulder, 

 a site which one would have thought more suited to 

 a Daw's requirements than a Raven's. It contains 

 five very pale eggs, with hardly any markings. After 

 this we climb to the top of the cliff, and, crossing the 

 moor, reach a belt of larches, where a pair of Kites 

 attempted, but unsuccessfully, to rear a brood last 

 year. The old nest, or a remnant, is still here, and 

 Mr. Pike pictures it several times. Here, too, a pair 

 of Buzzards wheel above us, squealing at intervals ; 

 for we are close to their old home, in a hoary oak, 

 and from the size of the nest it must have been in 

 use some seasons. 



On the way home we find still another Raven's 



