G14 The Zoologist— March, 1867. 



Peering into every crevice R. discerned the bright red of the inside 

 of the bill of a black guillemot, which foolishly betrayed herself 

 by opening her mouth, and which was immediately secured, with her 

 two eggs. I was somewhat surprised at this, as most authorities state 

 that the black guillemot is later in breeding than the common guillemot, 

 which certainly had not begun to lay even on the 26th of May, at Rath- 

 lin ; neither had the razorbills, which I have always found to lay a few 

 days earlier. Next came a rock pigeon, but the two eggs were unfor- 

 tunately broken in extracting the nest, which is often a considerable 

 bundle of dry grass. 



After shooting a chough for skinning we turned our steps homeward, 

 and R. took his first cormorant's nest with four eggs. On our way we 

 put up another pair of peregrines, and Francis said he would try for 

 the nest, but that he would have to do it either very early or very late, 

 as the owner of the ground used to get a guinea each for the young 

 birds, and therefore wanted to preserve them. This nest proved to 

 contain young. On arriving at home we found Jem waiting, with the 

 peregrine's eggs from the nest we had vainly attempted the previous 

 day : there were but two ; one very handsomely mottled, rather hard 

 set; the other a rich brickdust colour, and addled; so I wondered at 

 the birds making such a fuss as they did. 



Next morning we started to go with Francis and his brother in a 

 coragh round the caves, but unfortunately for us the weather was 

 favourable for getting in "yah," so for nearly three hours we were 

 doomed to be spectators of a scene, animated enough, but not exactly 

 what we wanted. Unavailing attempts to stalk sundry herons and a 

 couple of misses at some ring dotterel, varied by chat and pipes with 

 the groups around the bay, beguiled the lime until the last load of 

 "yah" came in, which we hastened to assist in unloading, and soon 

 bestowed ourselves in the wet coragh, in which we proceeded to the 

 caves. Now a coragh is not the best thing in the world for quick 

 shooting, inasmuch as standing up is not to be thought of, not even to 

 load, making a breech-loader highly desirable ; still we managed to 

 secure more rock pigeons than we could either skin or eat, and the 

 young ones, which were just beginuing to fly, were delicious, as fat as 

 butter. I much regret not having preserved one old bird, a hybrid I 

 think, but really we had so much to do all day, and the hospitality of 

 our friends left us so little time in the evenings, that the amount of 

 skinning we did was limited. No words of mine can describe the 

 beauties of the various caves we entered ; in one of them R. forced 



