1190 
PHALACROCOEAX CARBO. 
launched himself out from the dizzy height, and after circling over the field below returned to his perch beside 
his nest ; but, further than this, we saw no signs of the colony till we rounded the corner formed by the two 
laces of the rock, when suddenly burst upon us the lofty precipice, with its pinnacles standing out from the 
main mass and its whitened ledges, on all of which sat rows of glossy Cormorants, writhing their long necks, 
while the clanking notes ( kUoi-ink , klioi-ink) of the young birds crying for food made the rock resound again. 
M e had not long commenced to ascend the steep slope towards the foot of the crag when a pair of Peregrines 
darted out, one mounting far above the rock, and the other commencing her harsh note, kra, kra, kra, kra, 
which it kept up as it flew round and round for five hours incessantly. The eyrie was about 100 feet from 
the top of the crag, and directly above, on the very top of the rock, we found the spot strewn with the remains 
of young Cormorants, Jackdaws, small birds, &c., where the meals of the young Peregrines were prepared. 
Now and then a Cormorant, launching himself from the rock, would pass rather too near the nest, and the 
Falcon would swoop at him, making him emit a hollow bellowing sound like kidoong. There were about 80 
pairs of Cormorants nesting here, and at the time of my visit (5th of June) most of the young were hatched 
out ; but some eggs obtained were almost fresh. The nests were situated mostly on slanting ledges of about 
3 feet in width, or in nooks in the precipice; but many were on the very su mm it, of detached pinnacles, from 
which, as the gamekeeper who accompanied us said, many nearly full-grown young fall and are killed. They 
stand round the edges of the nest for some time before they are taken down to the v'ater by their parents, and 
probably in fighting with one another get pushed off the pinnacles. The nests were nearly all constructed of 
stems of the bracken-fern, plucked from the hill above the crag ; they measured about a foot in internal 
diameter ; and the young, which were mostly three in number, sat with their heads pointing in the same direc- 
tion. When returning from the sea to their young, or when coming back to their nests after being fired at, we 
always knew when the birds intended to alight by their spreading out their tails and stretching out their legs and 
huge feet almost at right angles to their bodies for about 50 yards from the nest, on arriving at which they uttered 
a loud guttural glock, glock, glock, which was answered by the other bird, were she on the nest, by a somewhat 
different note, like goik, goik, goik. My companion, an intelligent bird-stuffer and “ naturalist ” of Aberystwith 
and a crack shot, had brought with him a powerful 10-bore gun so as to procure specimens ; on a bird being 
fired at numbers of its companions would launch out into the air, but after flying round for a few minutes 
would come back a dozen at a time with a booming sound, like the rushing of the wind in a vessel’s rigging. 
Others sat still and did not move, and while some of the nests were being robbed many sat complacently 
watching us only a few yards distant. I was struck with the extraordinary vitality of some of the birds, 
which, when picked up, were found to have been shot right through : they flew steadily out from the top of 
the rock, many hundreds of feet above the fields below ; and as we watched them, looking towards the beautiful 
woods of Peniarth-achaf, the seat of Major Stewart, we observed them begin to quiver now and then, the 
motion of the wings becoming slower; then a sudden dip, followed by a few spasmodic flaps, told us that all 
w as over ; the birds would commence to descend rapidly, and spinning round and round through 800 feet of 
space, fell to the ground with a thud that we could hear from our elevated position. The young when taken 
from the nests stretched out their necks constantly and expanded the muscles of the pouch, at the same time 
quivering their heads. They are fed with digested food w'lien quite young. The eggs we took are long, nearly 
perfect ovals, slightly pointed at one end, and are covered with a moderately smooth chalky coat of varying 
thickness, which in many places comes away in large patches (most probably scraped off by the bird’s feet 
when newly laid) and discloses the bright sea-green under-shell. Examples measure 2-43 by 152 inches 2 - 62 
by 161, 2‘43 by 16, 2'54 by 1'57, 2'65 by 1*61, and 2 - 68 by l - 63. 
The young are conveyed down to the water on the backs of their parents, which interesting performance 
may, I am told, frequently be witnessed at the Craig-y-dern rock. 
Since this article went to press, my friend Mr. Seebohm informs me that he visited an extraordinary 
breeding-place of the Cormorant, between Amsterdam and Utrecht, this summer, where a large colony were 
breeding on the ground close to a sheet of water; there were about 200 nests in a space of about 15 square 
yards ; they were piles of sticks from one to four feet high, looking as if a new nest was made every year. 
