496 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



breeding Peewits, and from which you may, at the end of the 

 month, put up small flocks of wary Curlews. And on the banks 

 of the more sluggish streams there are other lush green marshes, 

 adorned with great clumps of yellow iris, crossed by ditches 

 grown up with marsh-plants, and flecked here and there with 

 cotton-grass, which tells of places which in a less dry season 

 would be deep and boggy. At Abersoch there is a nice marsh, 

 with a lot of reed-grown water, where Moor-hens chuckle, and 

 the Wild Duck's subdued quack may be heard in the evening ; 

 Reed-Buntings chant, and Sedge-Warblers chatter, and Herons 

 come down to feed. Snipe, too, may be flushed from thickets of 

 fragrant bog-myrtle (Myrica gale), where the spongy turf is full 

 of bog-loving plants, and in June was gay with spikes of deep 

 purple Orchis incarnata, pink 0. maculata, and pale, sweet 

 Habenaria bifolia. Moor-hens are common in the district, and 

 haunt quite small streams. Herons are often to be seen in the 

 marshes and harbour, or flying over. Snipes breed in the 

 marshes, and I flushed one from a meadow of good grass, and 

 saw another " drumming " over the high moorland on Cilan 

 headland. Peewits are quite common, having a sufficiency of 

 semi-waste ground to breed on. On the moorland at Cilan a 

 mobbing bird came within a yard of my head as I was innocently 

 gathering and washing a rare bog plant. In some of the narrow 

 green marshes along the coast Peewits are very abundant, and 

 their cries become most wearisome in time. Some were already 

 in flocks at the end of June. The Ringed Plover is found all 

 along the pebbly and sandy parts of the coast, their soft clear 

 "pe-ip" (syllables hardly divided) or "peep" being a constant 

 accompaniment to a walk along the beach. When two birds 

 run together (perhaps to congratulate one another on their young 

 having escaped observation), a chorus of " tooley tooley tooley " 

 breaks forth from them. Oystercatchers are to be found all 

 round the coast, at the base of rocky cliffs, on outlying rocks, and 

 on the islands. I saw some, too, in Pwllheli harbour, and on 

 the sands. Considerable numbers frequent one long raised 

 pebble beach, in two terraces, which merges on the landward side 

 in short turf or sand-hills. From the way they mobbed me 

 (flying round rather high up, with a painfully monotonous cry, 

 and anon coming straight at me) they seemed to have young. 



