252 PEL-ECANID^. 



cormorant builds in the clefts of rocks out of sight, lays in May, 

 and that about three hundred, perhaps, breed there. Two gentle- 

 men, then resident in Dunfanaghy, the nearest \dllage, assured 

 me that they had, in the preceding week, from a boat, killed both 

 species of cormorant on their nests within caves. 



At the Hards Islands, off the Galway coast, one of these birds 

 was shot on the 1st of August, 1844, and they were remarked 

 to be numerous there."^ In the island of Arranmore, numbers 

 build, and the eggs, with those of the common species, were 

 brought from the rocks, at the beginning of June 1835, to 

 Mr. R. Ball, who killed there, without seeing it, a fine adult 

 male. Having fired at a glaucous gull without observing any 

 other bird, he found " five herring-gulls had fallen near it, and 

 on landing and walking up the beach, the cormorant was found 

 with a shot through his brain, just dying." On the coast of 

 Kerry this species is said, like the common cormorant, to breed 

 on all the precipitous headlands, Kerry and Brandon Heads, 

 Muckalaw Eock, &c. ;t both species nidify at the cliff called 

 Esk, and at both sides the entrance into Dingle harbour; the 

 smaller having its nests about one-third the height of the cliff 

 from the water, and the larger about the same distance from the 

 top :{ — the small Skellig rock and Magharee islands are like- 

 wise the breeding-haunts of P. graculus, which is considered by 

 Mr. R. Chute to be more numerous in all localities on the coast 

 of Kerry, than P. caj'ho. " Between the Eeannies and the So- 

 vereign Islands, on the coast of Cork, the green cormorants are 

 not numerous, and appear less so than they really are, on account 

 of breeding in single pairs, far apart from each other, on snug 

 little shelves and ledges, on the same part of the coast as the 

 common species. One or two pan- breed on the Sovereign Is- 

 lands. Both cormorants appear to construct their nests of dried 

 sea-weed and grass."§ Great rmmbers nidify in the cliifs at Ard- 

 more, county Waterford;]! in those of the county Wexford they 

 also build, but are considered, on the coast of the latter gene- 



* Rev. G. Robiusou. t Mr. R. D. Rtzgerald, juu. 



+ lion. Mr. Moleyns. § Mr. R. Warren, jun. || Mr. Bali. 



