1190 PHALACROCOEAX CAEBO. 



launched himself out from the dizzy height, and after circling over the field below returned to his perch beside 

 his nest ; but, further than this, we saw no signs of the colony till we rounded the corner formed by the two 

 faces of the rock, when suddenly burst upon us the lofty precipice, with its pinnacles standing out from the 

 main mass and its whitened ledges, on all of which sat rows of glossy Cormorants, writhing their long necks, 

 while the clanking notes (klidl-ink, Midi-ink) of the young birds crying for food made the rock resound again. 

 We had not long commenced to ascend the steep slope towards the foot of. the crag when a pair of Peregrines 

 darted out, one mounting far above the rock, and the other commencing her harsh note, kra, kra, kra, kra, 

 which it kept up as it flew round and round for five hours incessantly. The eyrie was about 100 feet from 

 the top of the ci-ag, and directly above, on the very top of the rock, we found the spot strewn with the remains 

 of young Cormorants, Jackdaws, small birds, &c, where the meals of the young Peregrines were prepared. 

 Now and then a Cormorant, launching himself from the rock, would pass rather too near the nest, and the 

 Falcon would swoop at him, making him emit a hollow bellowing sound like kiuoong. There were about 80 

 pairs of Cormorants nesting here, and at the time of my visit (5th of June) most of the young were hatched 

 out ; but some eggs obtained were almost fresh. The nests were situated mostly on slanting ledges of about 

 3 feet in width, or in nooks in the precipice ; but many were on the very summit of detached pinnacles, from 

 which, as the gamekeeper who accompanied us said, many nearly full-grown 'young fall and are killed. They 

 stand round the edges of the nest for some time before they are taken down to the water by their parents, and 

 probably in fighting with one another get pushed off the pinnacles. The nests were nearly all constructed of 

 stems of the bracken-fern, plucked from the hill above the crag ; they measured about a foot in internal 

 diameter ; and the young, which were mostly three in number, sat with their heads pointing iu the same direc- 

 tion. "When returning from the sea to their young, or when coming back to their nests after being fired at, we 

 always knew when the birds intended to alight by their spreading out their tails and stretching out their legs and 

 huge feet almost at right angles to their bodies for about 50 yards from the nest, on arriving at which they uttered 

 a loud guttural (/lock, glock, glock, which was answered by the other bird, were she on the nest, by a somewhat 

 different note, like goik, go'/k, goik. My companion, an intelligent bird-stuffer and " naturalist " of Aberystwith 

 and a crack shot, had brought with him a powerful 10-bore gun so as to procure specimens ; on a bird being 

 fired at numbers of its companions would launch out into the air, but after flying round for a few minutes 

 would come back a dozen at a time with a booming sound, like the rushing of the wind in a vessel's rigging. 

 Others sat still and did not move, and while some of the nests were being robbed many sat complacently 

 watching us only a few yards distant. I was struck with the extraordinary vitality of some of the birds, 

 which, when picked up, were found to have been shot right through : they flew steadily out from the top of 

 the rock, many hundreds of feet above the fields below ; and as we watched them, looking towards the beautiful 

 woods of Peniarth-achaf, the seat of Major Stewart, we observed them begin to quiver now and then, the 

 motion of the wings becoming slower; then a sudden dip, followed by a few spasmodic flaps, told us that all 

 was over; the birds would commence to descend rapidly, and spinning round and round through 800 feet of 

 space, fell to the ground with a thud that we could hear from our elevated position. The young when taken 

 from the nests stretched out their necks constantly and expanded the muscles of the pouch, at the same time 

 quivering their heads. They are fed with digested food when quite young. The eggs we took are long, nearly 

 perfect ovals, slightly pointed at one end, and are covered with a moderately smooth chalky coat of varying 

 thickness, which in many places comes away in large patches (most probably scraped off by the bird's feet 

 when newly laid) and discloses the bright sea-green under-shell. Examples measure 2'43 by 1'52 inches, 2'62 

 by 161, 2-43 by 16, 254 by P57, 2"G5 by 161, and 2"68 by 163. 



The young are conveyed down to the water on the backs of their parents, which interesting performance 

 may, I am told, frequently be witnessed at the Ciaig-y-dern rock. 



Since this article went to press, my friend Mr. Seebohm informs me that he visited an extraordinary 

 breeding-place of the Cormorant, between Amsterdam and Utrecht, this summer, where a large colony were 

 breeding on the ground close to a sheet of water; there were about 200 nests in a space of about 15 square 

 yards; they were piles of sticks from one to four feet high, looking as if a new nest was made every year. 



