NOTES ON TEE BIRDS OF ANGLESEA. 215 



about the bay, but did not approach so closely as the falcon. 

 Once a second tiercel appeared on the scene, and the two males 

 were out over the sea together for some minutes. One — perhaps 

 the falcon's mate — mounted again and again above the other, 

 and stooped at it ; the bird attacked always swerved aside, 

 apparently just avoiding collision. One, or possibly both, uttered 

 a screaming cry, quite different from the ordinary barking note 

 of alarm. On June 2nd we visited the eyrie on the north-west 

 coast which we described last year. The birds had again re- 

 sorted to the same niche, and on the narrow ledge were three 

 young birds, and an unhatched, or, possibly, addled egg. The 

 young birds were smaller than those we had seen on the previous 

 day ; they did not scramble about, but lay prone and motionless. 

 The falcon was noticeably paler than the one near Holyhead. 

 Here, as at the other eyries, we remarked a difference in the 

 alarm-note of the sexes ; that of the falcon is "hek, hek, hek," 

 and is usually repeated more quickly than the "hak, hak, hak" 

 of the tiercel. A pair of Peregrines nested this year on an over- 

 hanging limestone cliff near Peumon. We started the falcon 

 from the nest on April 30th, when she flew out over the sea 

 without a cry and disappeared. 



The Herring-Gull is par excellence the Gull of the North 

 Wales coast. There is a large colony on the cliffs between the 

 North and South Stacks, and another a little to the south of the 

 South Stack ; scattered pairs nest along the cliffs as far as Porth 

 Dafarch, but from the South Stack itself the bird has apparently 

 been banished. Several pairs used to nest on the grass beneath 

 the lighthouse-wall ; in May, 1886, we saw them nesting here, 

 and even so late as 1892 a number of young birds, still unable 

 to fly, were standing on the grassy slope within a few yards of 

 the lighthouse buildings. 



Harried by visitors, and also by the lighthouse-keepers, the 

 birds have sought an asylum on the inaccessible cliffs opposite 

 the rock, a reversal of what, according to Bishop Stanley 

 ('Familiar History of Birds'), took place when the lighthouse 

 was in course of construction. The Gulls (which by the way he 

 miscalled Larus canus) bred in vast numbers on the rock prior 

 to the erection of the lighthouse. Blasting operations and the 

 busy work of construction drove them to the cliffs, where they 



