Birds. 9665 



A Visit to the Dorsetshire Coast in the Nesting Season. 

 By J. Edmund Harting, Esq., F.Z.S. 



I WAS very desirous to see some of the rarer cliff-birds in their 

 haunts, and more particularly the peregrine, raven, chough and rock 

 dove, and with this view I started, in company with a friend, to visit 

 the Dorsetshire coast; for reports had reached me to the effect that 

 these birds were still to be found in some of the lofty cliffs there; nor 

 was I altogether disappointed. 



We took up our quarters at West Lulworth, and could hardly have 

 selected a more delightfully quiet and picturesque place. In driving 

 from the station at Wool to Lulworth, a distance of six miles, we saw 

 but few birds, with the exception of several pairs of peewits, which 

 were evidently breeding in the neighbourhood, and a solitary herring 

 gull. With regard to the breeding-stations of one or two species of 

 which we were in search, we gathered a few useful hints from some of 

 the fishermen, and were thus enabled to proceed at once to the most 

 likely spots in which to find them. 



The observations which 1 daily noted down were, as a matter of 

 course, without any arrangement, and merely headed with the day of 

 the month. 1 have since endeavoured to put these rough notes into a 

 more useful shape, by placing under the head of each species all the 

 remarks I had made with reference to it. 



Peregrine Falcon. — One of our greatest hopes was to see this noble 

 bird in his true haunts among the steep and rugged cliffs, and I con- 

 fess I should have been disappointed not a little had we searched for 

 him in vain ; although in these days, when so many birds of prey are 

 sacrificed to the taste for game preserving and collecting, I could 

 hardly have been surprised had we found the species extinct. On 

 the 22nd of May, L. saw a female peregrine fly over the arched rock 

 at Durdle, — called by the fishermen " Durdle Door," — and the same 

 evening I picked up, on Swyre Cliff, a feather which had undoubtedly 

 dropped from the wing of one of these birds. A few days later, during 

 one of our rambles, we found, at a short distance from the edge of one 

 of the cliffs, several remnants and well-picked bones of guillemots, 

 which we attributed to the work of a peregrine, for no other bird in- 

 habits these cliffs which would have sufficient strength to kill a guille- 

 mot, except perhaps the raven, and I doubt whether even he would make 

 the attempt upon an old bird, unless it had been previously wounded. 

 VOL. XXIII. 2 o 



