86 CHOUGH 
considerably in situation, but are always more or less con- 
cealed, either in the interior of a cave or in a more open 
place in a fissure. , 
One nesting place is in a cave of unusual size and regu- 
larity of outline. The green brows above, on which in 
May the delicate lilac squill is profusely in flower, slope 
nearly to its roof. On either side of its entrance are cliffs 
almost sheer; from above it cannot directly be entered, but 
beyond the crags on one side is a little strand, in whose 
recesses fronds of maidenhair, tenderly green, are watered 
by the springs trickling down the fissures. From this 
strand, by clambering at the foot of the precipice over low 
rocks and little sandy patches, the cave can be reached at 
the ebb. At high water the tide fills its mouth and part 
of its interior, but never reaches the end, its utmost point 
being marked by the floats and broken timber which lie 
among the heaped-up shingle, green and slippery with 
mould. .A warm, heavy dampness pervades the air of the 
place; about the entrance Grey Crows build; outside on 
the cliff crevices afford space for the eggs of the Razorbill 
and the nests of the Shag; and the high shelves form roosts 
for the Cormorant. Rock Pipits flit above the tangle cast 
up on the sand; parties of Black Guillemots swim on the 
green water just outside the rocks. Behind the brows are 
cultivated fields, but their edges are waste and rough with 
long grass, heather, and low gorse. On these grassy and 
earthy slopes the nests of Herring Gulls are abundant, and 
their clamour fills the air. In this cave the first Chough’s 
nest I saw was placed high on a dark shelf in 1877, and 
the same site has been used in a later year. Later still, in 
1895, the cave had a nest in a fissure in the roof, some 
thirty feet above the water, which at high tide filled the 
cavern beneath. 
In the Zoologist (1896, p. 470) I have described a nesting 
