SUMMER IN LLEYN. 49 



wits and Curlews. The cries of the latter are very soft now, 

 "curlewee"; and I heard also the mellow flute-like migratory 

 call, " klee-tler-wer," which I have sometimes heard from birds 

 passing over at night in Oxfordshire. Passing Pistyll Cim 

 (where some Herring-Gulls nest on the cliff), I drank of the 

 " sweet water " of the clear spring, where such a lot of bog- 

 pimpernel was flowering, and, rounding the stony-topped 

 Trwyn-yr-Wylfa where you almost always see Shags, descended 

 to Porth Caered, whose sweeping slopes drop to the sandy 

 beach, and are covered with short bracken seared by sun and 

 salt winds, and varied here and there by a few tall mullein 

 plants. The bracken is followed by marram-grown sands, and 

 a low bluff separates this from the sandy shore. How few birds 

 one sees in these bleak, wintry-looking spots ! From here I made 

 my way to the undercliff beneath the fearful precipice of Pared 

 Mawr — an eerie spot that evening. A few Herring-Gulls had 

 not yet got their young away (July 25th). There were two in a 

 nest on a pinnacle of rock, and I got close to another (full- 

 fledged) on a ledge. The old Gulls made curving swoops over 

 me with a swish of wings and angry cries of " ag-ag-ag " and 

 " kiow" as I stood under the mighty rock-wall, withCilan to the 

 west almost hidden and looming mysteriously out of the white 

 mist creeping in from the sea on the soft south air. Down below 

 the sea was so clear that all the stones at the bottom and the 

 brown seaweed could be seen clearly. The cries of a pair of 

 Kestrels (common birds along the cliffs I am glad to say) rang 

 out with surprising loudness. But Cilan was soon quite blotted 

 out, and I thought it advisable to get out of the rocks, for the 

 sea-mists of Lleyn are sometimes inconveniently thick. A Corn- 

 Crake was calling as I walked home. A clutch of eight eggs of 

 this bird, quite fresh, was waiting for me. They had been mown 

 out of hay-grass a day or two before the 24th — rather a late 

 date. Failing a knowledge of the English name, it was well 

 described as " a brown colar bird, and it ues to sing at night." 



But to go back to my notes on Gulls. On the cliff at St. 

 Tudwal's Islands on the 25th there were only two nearly full- 

 grown young ones. On the 27th I landed on Ynys Gwylan fawr 

 and fach, and found on both many adult Herring-Gulls, which 

 breed there in numbers. They were almost as noisy as in spring, 



