494 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Mynydd Mawr are cropped with oats and barley. It seemed 

 strange at first, in a climate so mild and soft that myrtles, 

 hydrangeas, fuchsias, and large bushes of escallonia flourish in 

 the cottage gardens, to be told that wheat is hardly worth grow- 

 ing ; but in Lleyn almost every wind comes off the sea, and it 

 must be rarely that it enjoys a summer so hot and dry as that of 

 1899, when haymaking was in full swing at Aberdaron at the end 

 of June. But, notwithstanding the comparative scarcity of corn, 

 the Corn-Bunting is an abundant bird as far westward, and as far 

 on to the headlands, as the little fields extend, even unto the last 

 of the fields before we climb the heathery slopes of Mynydd 

 Mawr. I think the curiously local distribution of this bird does 

 not depend on the presence or absence of corn ; but the bird 

 undoubtedly shows a liking for open cultivated ground near the 

 sea- coast. The Yellow Bunting is a common roadside bird, and 

 seemed richly coloured. I saw one with a particularly rich and 

 brilliant yellow head. On June 28th I watched, and listened for 

 some time to the song of, a male Cirl Bunting at Llanbedrog. I 

 could hear another bird singing at a little distance. I noticed it 

 again two days later (vide Zool. 1899, p. 822). The Reed- 

 Bunting is common in the marshes. The Sky-Lark, as far as I 

 saw, is not very numerous ; and I do not think Lleyn would 

 prove a good Partridge country, although I happened to put up 

 two some distance apart from the side of a field-path in one day, 

 and one does not see much of Partridges in June. Pheasants are 

 to be heard in the covers, and I found the broken shell of an egg 

 on Pwllheli sand-hills. The Eifl group is probably the western 

 outpost in Carnarvonshire of the Red Grouse. I did not expect 

 to see any Grouse there, and was much startled, as I was looking 

 among the bracken for the young of a pair of Ring- Ouzels, at 

 springing a pair within a few yards of my feet. They went away 

 with a loud " bek bek bek," just like that of the Willow-Grouse. 

 They had been scratching in the peaty soil, and I picked up some 

 dark and richly coloured small feathers. 



The Corn-Crake is very abundant in Lleyn, almost every 

 field with suitable covers holding one. A Corn-Crake used to 

 crake from a little close quite in the new town of Pwllheli. It 

 has been so much less common of late years in Oxfordshire than 

 was formerly the case that I quite enjoyed hearing so much of it, 



