588 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



One sees it only in the immediate neighbourhood of its holes at 

 nesting-time, and it is very confident and easily observed. 



Beginning at the north of the island, and going down the 

 west coast, the sandy brows are exchanged for rock about two 

 miles south of Kirk Michael. A few Herring Gulls and a pair 

 or two of the Lesser Black-backed Gull, Larus fuscus, nest at 

 some spots north of Peel. But the first colony of any extent is 

 south of that town, and is easy — indeed too easy — of access. It 

 extends in an interrupted fashion for about two miles, but its 

 main strength is on a range of cliffs, called in Manx, no doubt 

 from the orange lichen which plentifully crusts its upper face, 

 Bing Buigh. A path leads from Peel Harbour across a waste 

 heathery hill to a slate-quarry, now deserted ; about a quarter of a 

 mile before reaching this the track, skirts the highest of the 

 precipices, and looks down upon the stony strand which just at 

 that point lies at their feet. The cliff, perhaps 200 feet high, 

 here runs inland from the sea, and above the strand is almost 

 perpendicular, while diagonally across its face passes something 

 like a rude rock stairway, ironically known in local speech as 

 " The Ladder." On the other side of the strand steep grassy 

 brows, mixed with rock surfaces, descend almost to sea-level, 

 and allow of a rather risky scramble to the bottom. At the point 

 of the long precipice is a double cave, its two parts merging into 

 one internally, but at the entrance separated by a great offshoot 

 from the cliff above, which is prolonged into a singular mass of 

 rock some fifty feet high, the flat summit of which cannot be 

 reached from below. This outlier is a great Shag-roost, and 

 fifty Shags or so dive into the clear water below when a boat 

 approaches, while far up on the main rock-face others sit securely 

 on their nests, from which they are, when incubation has once 

 advanced, scarcely to be scared. A small colony of Razorbills 

 mingles with the Shags, and a row of them sit with their dusky 

 neighbours on the top of the outlier, the lower parts of which are 

 profusely strewn with fragments of the weed used by the former 

 in the construction of their nests (I saw it last summer strewn 

 also with the fragments of Shags' and Razorbills' eggs broken 

 there by some rapacious plunderer). In May the huge boulders 

 and fallen earth of the beach were gay with the large dog-daisies 

 of the Sea-feverfew, and up near the very top of the high cliff, on 

 luxuriant grassy ledges, many Herring Gulls were nesting in 



