2424 The Zoologist— January, 1871. 



and the cries of the rock birds are mingling with the angry roar of 

 the waves, as the mist wreaths up horn beneath. Now and then a 

 razorbill or guillemot is driven up by the wind, as a spark from a 

 furnace, and brushes past me, as it wheels round and drops under 

 the lea of the rocks. 



As I stand watching and listening the wind freshens, the cloud 

 gets lighter, the sun peers through, the restless waves are seen 

 through the watery mist, and the awful gulf of Sloch-na-page yawns 

 beneath me, while from its moulh the fog curls upward to join the 

 driving cloud. I am standing on the extreme edge of the Island of 

 Bernera, where a gulf of sea runs in between precipices of 600 

 or 700 feet in height, leaving a chasm so narrow that a stone can 

 easily be thrown across ; the eye runs down the immense depth, 

 from ledge to ledge, from crevice to crevice, the rock birds getting 

 smaller and smaller with the distance, till the eye is unable to dis- 

 tinguish individuals, and only the white patches can be discerned, 

 and the telescope has to be used to distinguish the species. The 

 birds are breeding in the same order hero as on other parts of the 

 cliffs; guillemots at the base, where the ledges are broader, and 

 where they can crowd closer together; then razorbills intermingled, 

 and a few puffins on the upper portions ; the kittiwakes build their 

 nests from near the base to the top, singly and in small groups. 

 I climb a little way down to get shelter from the wind and find a 

 nest of the hoodie crow, with four young ones nearly fledged, the 

 nest being placed in a cleft of rock and very conspicuous. This 

 chasm has been the haunt of the peregrine falcon from time im- 

 memorial. The falcons of Barra Head used to be held in such 

 estimation that it is said the rent of the island was paid with the 

 young. Alarmed at my approach, the tercel daslies out from the 

 opposite precipice, rushes past, and whirls the rock birds about, so 

 that they can hardly settle, and high above the roar of the waves 

 beneath, loud above the mingled clamour of the rock birds, his 

 shrill cry, "hac, hac, hac, hac!" is heard. The nest is on the 

 opposite side of the chasm, a hundred yards off, and I can see his 

 mate sitting on her nest, and a wee downy peregrine poking its 

 round pate from under her feathers: with a telesco])e I observe 

 every glance of her eye as she looks across at me. It forms a 

 picture to delight the heart of a lover of nature ; the angry tercel 

 screaming above, his mate guarding her young one, while countless 

 rock birds are breeding in security beneath and around her or 



