146 SHAG 
beneath the very brow of a precipice on any little shelf; 
others again are placed on high ledges, such as Cormorants 
occupy, and even amid luxuriant grass. The site is used 
year after year in at least many instances. 
When incubation is advanced, the Shag shows much 
agitation at an approach to her nest, and leaves it with 
reluctance, soon returning and settling with her peculiar 
braying croak, which is seldom or never heard elsewhere. 
The structure is of very varying size, according to the site 
in which it stands—weeds, grass, heather, bracken, and 
other herbage being sometimes piled into a large untidy 
mass, which soon becomes wet, dirty, and ill-smelling. 
Sometimes, when in a sufficiently open situation, the 
whitened surroundings become very conspicuous, as about 
one nest which in 1901 could be marked for about three 
miles’ distance. 
In the choice of a nesting time the Shag is apparently 
erratic. The eggs are most commonly laid early in May, 
but young may sometimes be met with by that time, and, 
on the other hand, fresh layings are frequent at the end of 
June. There is in standard works considerable discrepancy 
as to the number of eggs laid by this species, but three is 
certainly the general number in Man, and I have never 
known of more, while two sometimes constitute a clutch. 
Unlike the more wandering Cormorant, the Shag frequents 
its breeding haunts all the year round. 
There is perhaps in the island no prettier sea-bird colony, 
though the number frequenting it is not large, than that at 
Stroin Vuigh, a little north of the Slock. The ridge, one 
thousand feet high, which extends north from the latter 
spot, throws down to the headland a long and graceful 
slope, ending in sheer, though not very lofty, cliffs, in which 
a dark cavern opens. Clear green water washes upon the 
lower ledges, and over the cave’s mouth Razorbills are 
