94 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
there by the Cromlech builders. There we find ourselves 
invading the domain of Oystercatchers. The males, perched 
each on some little elevation, fly towards and over us with 
their shrill ventriloquial cry that seems to come from the ground 
beneath. The females slip quietly off their eggs, run a little 
way, and then join the males on the wing. We found three 
young in down on the 27th May, which ran a bit, separated, 
and crouched among the rocky ground where you would never 
discern them unless you had seen them squat. In this unusual 
breeding-place the Oystercatcher’s eggs are often laid in a little 
hollow in the sod between some knobs of rock (which keep the 
feet of cattle off), and where some sheltering bracken is scattered. 
A few dead stems of the latter line the cavity, but in one instance 
this was lined with dry rabbit’s dung, on which the eggs were 
laid. We found four nests besides the young on the hill-top last 
May, and three others on lower parts of the island. The eggs 
were two or three in number, in one instance a single egg, which, 
like the majority of the others, was much incubated. I only 
once saw a clutch of four taken on the Saltees. Oystercatchers 
seem to breed on all unfrequented parts of the island that are not 
too precipitous. 
We now come to the great gullery which extends round the 
southern part and forms the most striking feature of this sea- 
bird’s land. As you look down the hill-slopes towards the sea, 
you see them, especially in the rocky parts, spotted with Herring 
Gulls and Lesser Blackbacks, which, on observing your approach, 
first rise from their eggs, stand in front of their nests, and then 
take wing with loud outcries, forming a wheeling crowd overhead. 
While walking over the uneven slopes, one’s feet are con- 
stantly in danger of crushing some Gull’s nest, which is often 
placed merely among the bosses of thrift, or in some little 
nook backed by points of rock, and is usually composed of 
tufts of withered thrift and other materials from the peaty soil. 
The hundreds of these nests that one meets with round the 
hill-slopes, and even on the flat top, excite astonishment, and 
as we walk among them we are struck with the great difference 
made by security in the habits of these birds which lay thus on 
the open hills. 
I know of no such colony of the larger Gulls in the South 
of Ireland, nor of any other breeding place of the Lesser Black- 
