BAYS. 
101 
daintily preening tlieir feathers. One is quietly 
perched on a slender graceful spray, which waves 
in the wind from one of the fissures half-way down 
a perpendicular wall of rock many hundred feet in 
descent ; while others near the top seem to be 
paying each other polite attentions on green carpets 
fragrant with the scent of wild blossoming thyme. 
Hundreds fly out from the side of the cliff on the 
report of a gun, and after a short excursion return 
again to the security of their rocky homes. A 
brown owl maintains her ancient solitary reign ” 
in the secret recesses. Numbers of pretty hoopoes 
are flitting about in their peculiar jaunty manner, 
raising and depressing their crests, and archly 
coquetting with one another. Large kites and 
hawks," of which I have observed two species, sail, 
poised on outspread wings, high above the island ; 
linnets utter their short pleasing notes as they rise 
in clouds ; and a quail is shot in the high grass at 
the summit. 
The little bays which indent the base of the 
island are paved with smooth rounded pebbles 
