ALONG ROCK-BOUND COASTS. 223 



ledges and crannies of the rocks. The highest 

 and most important cliff in the island is Connacher 

 a vast wall of rock falling sheer down to the 

 Atlantic, formed by a mountain-side, twelve 

 hundred feet high, having crumbled away before 

 the stormy buffetings of this wide ocean during 

 past ages. It is utterly impossible to portray 

 the stirring scenes in this brief notice ; and I 

 must refer any reader who is sufficiently interested 

 in the subject to my work, " Our Rarer Birds," 

 where he will find a full description of these 

 famous islands and the birds that breed upon 

 them. 



Along the rocky coasts in certain favoured 

 districts we may find the EIDER DUCK (Somateria Hebrides, 



7 / \ i i i i i extending to 



mottissima) breeding in localities suited to its gJJ^ 

 needs. The Eider is a thorough bird of the sea, and Femes. 

 and only comes on land for the purpose of rearing 

 its young. In spring, parties of these birds may 

 be met with inshore, among the little rocky creeks 

 and fiords, and then the males are particularly 

 noisy, paying court to the females by swimming 

 round them, bowing their heads, and opening and 

 closing their wings, and uttering a grunting kind 

 of noise. Soon after this the birds separate into 

 pairs, and by the middle of May the nests are 

 ready for eggs. Although the Eider usually 

 makes her nest upon the low, rocky islands in a 

 crevice of the rocks, or even amongst the sea 

 campion and long, coarse grass, she occasionally 

 chooses a site on the cliffs, hundreds of feet above 

 the water. The crevices of old ruins and the holes 

 in tumble-down walls are also selected for nesting- 

 places, as the visitor to the Feme Islands will not 

 fail to remark. The nest, made entirely by the 



