SEA-BIRD COLONIES IN THE ISLE OF MAN. 393 



conspicuous. Though usually placed far out of reach of the spray, 

 and often under protection of the highest cliff-ridge topping some 

 hrow, I saw one last year in a kind of gully, only some fifteen 

 feet above high-water mark. 



The Raven, Corvus cor ax > holds his own well on Man. 

 During 1893 I visited seven nesting-places, and there are 

 perhaps as many more. On May 9th I came upon two sites 

 within a mile-and-a-half of each other. The first was above an 

 unfrequented " traie," and exceedingly conspicuous, built on the 

 back of a projecting and overhanging shelf, with a similar shelf 

 behind it. It was only about twenty feet from below, and perhaps 

 seventy from the top of the cliff, for this was here comparatively 

 low. At one side a grassy brow ran up to a level with it, and 

 I could make out at least one well-fledged young bird. Higher up 

 was an old nest. The parents were very excited, and one of them 

 kept constantly plucking dry grass from the ledges, and showering 

 it around. The second site was on an immense perpendicular 

 cliff, near the top ; another nest lay on the same ledge at a few 

 yards' distance, and a third a little higher up, forming a triangle. 

 At this place also the pair of birds was in attendance. On May 

 14th I saw the young from another nest, which I have known for 

 fifteen years, flying and scrambling among the crags in the vicinity 

 of their birth-place. Even in winter the Raven does not entirely 

 forsake its nesting-place. Thus on December 26th last I saw a 

 pair at the usual spot. 



Jackdaws are, in places, very numerous, often where no other 

 birds frequent, as, for instance, on the brows between White 

 Strand and Glen Mooar. I was, in 1893, disappointed in my hope 

 of seeing much of the Chough, Pyrrhocorax graculus, in its 

 narrowing limits, but in 1894 I met with it in several locali- 

 ties. Inexorable natural law, accelerated by the destructiveness 

 of man, is, here as elsewhere, working out the extinction of 

 this most graceful of the Corvidce. Yet I think its scarcity must 

 be somewhat over-estimated by the informant of Mr. H. A. 

 Macpherson, who in his recently published * British Birds' (p. 40), 

 speaks of it as limited here to a few pairs. In 1890, in one of its 

 localities, it appeared by no means rare. In the winter of 1893 

 — 94 some were seen on the sandy northern shores, to which they 

 seem regularly to wander at that season. During the summer of 

 those two years I met with them at six other localities, four of 



ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XVIII. — OCT, 1894. 2 H 



