Anglesey 



feet. But when he gets up on the wing, as he will 

 do upon the slightest provocation, the bird is trans- 

 formed. With free, powerful flight he circles out 

 to sea and back again, the sharply pointed wings, 

 striped longitudinally with broad alternating bars of 

 black and white, more than justifying the bird's 

 other name of " sea-magpie." As he flies he utters 

 incessantly a loud, metallic, piping note. 



As we approached the rocks, a cock bird, who 

 had stood guard on a low stone wall running along 

 the edge of the clifF, piped out while we were still 

 about a hundred yards off. When a cock pipes at a 

 distance and keeps to the ground, it is a signal to 

 the sitting hen to quit the nest, and a safe sign to 

 the observer that the birds have eggs, and not 

 young. If the young are out, both birds get up 

 and maintain a perfectly distracting piping. 



We inferred from the position of the male that 

 the female was somewhere on the rocks below, but 

 searched in vain there for the nest. The oyster- 

 catcher makes its nest as a rule on shingle a few 

 feet above high-water mark, or on the rocks. A sure 

 sign of the bird's having frequented a particular spot 

 is afforded by the empty limpet shells strewn about. 

 Although I saw a large number of these lying on the 

 turf quite a long way from the rocks, the thought 

 never entered my head that an oyster-catcher would 

 nest anywhere but near to the shore. Some days 

 later, however, I was returning from working on the 

 cliffs, and, crossing the green to save time, noticed 



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