Cornish Cliffs in Spring 51 



the larger bird is not only more powerful in flight, 

 but is perceptibly blacker upon the back and wings. 

 These parts of the lesser black-back are of a very 

 dark slate-grey. The lesser black-backs have a way 

 of settling rather on the fringe of the gulleries 

 especially on the topmost part of the cliff as if 

 they were aware of being newcomers, and present 

 only by sufferance of the majority. But their nests 

 and eggs are in all respects so like those of the 

 herring-gull that they are only to be distinguished 

 with certainty by seeing the parent bird actually 

 sitting upon them. 



Thanks to the richness of these cliffs in leafy 

 cover, land-birds as well as sea-birds abound at the 

 breeding season on many slopes. Parti- coloured 

 stonechats mount guard in every furze-brake over 

 the securely hidden nests, when their duskier hens 

 are sitting ; linnets people the same thickets with 

 flight and song, green woodpeckers haunt the 

 scrubby hollows, and the elfin wren works busily 

 within sound of the Atlantic. From the deeper 

 brakes the blackbird chatters his familiar alarm : 

 and on the upper grassy slopes the meadow-pipits 

 toss up and down in parachute-like flights of song. 

 But most truly native to the spot of all the smaller 

 birds is the rock-pipit, which is as inseparable from 

 surf -beaten coast- lines as the petrel from the open 

 seas. The rock-pipit is a small and dusky bird, of 

 fugitive and restless ways, and of no great power of 

 song. But it holds an exceptional position, as a 

 land-bird by kinship and appearance which has 

 wedded itself to the craggiest and most tempest- 



