MEDITERRANEAN NOTES 177 



and those we saw were shy ; I succeeded, however, in 

 shooting two, one a splendid black bird, the other was 

 one of yesterday's wounded birds, and unfortunately fell 

 on a ledge to which the men could not clamber. The 

 rock doves also made themselves scarce, and we only 

 shot two. The men scoured the island, and brought 

 off several dozen of herring gulls' eggs and twelve eggs 

 of the great shearwater, with seven of the parent birds, 

 caught on the nest about the cliffs at the south end of 



o 



the rock. I saw many Alpine swifts, but not the swarm 

 that was at Isola Rossa ; on the west side, which is very 

 granc), a few kestrels ; shags really in thousands. The 

 common swifts have a settlement on the low crags at the 

 north-east end. I shot a very fine raven, one of two 

 seen. The men brought down two young herring gulls. 



4 ' On Toro we found a great many Eleonora falcons, 

 but they flew so high, and were so shy, that I only 



got one, a beautiful specimen, very black. M and 



some of our boys having landed with some difficulty on 

 the north side, Tait, James Hills, and I lay in the boat on 

 the west side. I noticed several gulls on their nests on a 

 weed-grown slope on the north-east side, not very high 

 up, and directly they took wing I saw that they were 

 not the herring gull (Larus argentatus]. One gave me a 

 good chance, and I brought him down dead on the rock 

 close to us ; Hills went to pick him up, and what was 

 my delight when I found he was a splendid specimen of 

 Larus audouini. I immediately sent Hills to the nests ; 



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