88 CHOUGH 
top of a lofty opening which: perforates an immense stack 
isolated at high water. Mr. E. U. Savage has found the 
Chough nesting in a deep crevice in ground resembling the 
well-known ‘Chasms’ near Spanish Head, where a landslip 
has taken place near the edge of the cliff. 
Mr. W. Cottier tells me that there was, and perhaps still 
is, a nesting place in an old mine-shaft on the brow of a 
headland. I have since visited this place. The top of the 
shaft is built up into a short tower-like structure which 
forms a flat platform, in the midst of which opens the deep 
square cavity with water covering the bottom perhaps a 
hundred feet below. There are numerous joist-holes in the 
sides, and in these the nests were placed. The mine has 
been unworked for about thirty years. Though on the 
edge of a barren coast, the site is close to a little haven 
with a hamlet, and the land about is cultivated, except this 
rough strip along the seaward side of the promontory. 
Some years ago, it is said, the nest in this forbidding 
situation was stormed by a party of lads from the neigh- 
bouring town, who let down a rope into the pit and brought 
away the young birds. 
When sufficient room is afforded the nest is a large, 
firmly-built, and even neat structure, but in a narrow 
fissure it may be very like that of a Jackdaw, a loose and 
formless mass of material. A nest of this character is 
described by Mr. Graves :— 
‘It was built at the end of a narrow sloping fissure in 
the face of a bold open head about two hundred feet above 
the sea, and which crowned a series of grassy slopes and 
broken rocky outcrops rising from a small strand. The 
nest, owing to the situation, was very small. It was built 
principally of untidy tufts of sheep’s wool, mixed with a 
little cow’s hair, a few horse-hairs, and small tufts of fine 
root-like fibre and fine grass, all loosely matted together, 
. forming the lining, which rested on the rock in the centre; 
