Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/528

494 Mynydd Mawr are cropped with oats and barley. It seemed strange at first, in a climate so mild and soft that myrtles, hydrangeas, fuchsias, and large bushes of escallonia flourish in the cottage gardens, to be told that wheat is hardly worth growing; but in Lleyn almost every wind comes off the sea, and it must be rarely that it enjoys a summer so hot and dry as that of 1899, when haymaking was in full swing at Aberdaron at the end of June. But, notwithstanding the comparative scarcity of corn, the Corn-Bunting is an abundant bird as far westward, and as far on to the headlands, as the little fields extend, even unto the last of the fields before we climb the heathery slopes of Mynydd Mawr. I think the curiously local distribution of this bird does not depend on the presence or absence of corn; but the bird undoubtedly shows a liking for open cultivated ground near the sea-coast. The Yellow Bunting is a common roadside bird, and seemed richly coloured. I saw one with a particularly rich and brilliant yellow head. On June 28th I watched, and listened for some time to the song of, a male Cirl Bunting at Llanbedrog. I could hear another bird singing at a little distance. I noticed it again two days later (vide Zool. 1899, p. 322). The Reed-Bunting is common in the marshes. The Sky-Lark, as far as I saw, is not very numerous; and I do not think Lleyn would prove a good Partridge country, although I happened to put up two some distance apart from the side of a field-path in one day, and one does not see much of Partridges in June. Pheasants are to be heard in the covers, and I found the broken shell of an egg on Pwllheli sand-hills. The Eifl group is probably the western outpost in Carnarvonshire of the Red Grouse. I did not expect to see any Grouse there, and was much startled, as I was looking among the bracken for the young of a pair of Ring-Ouzels, at springing a pair within a few yards of my feet. They went away with a loud "bek bek bek," just like that of the Willow-Grouse. They had been scratching in the peaty soil, and I picked up some dark and richly coloured small feathers.

The Corn-Crake is very abundant in Lleyn, almost every field with suitable covers holding one. A Corn-Crake used to crake from a little close quite in the new town of Pwllheli. It has been so much less common of late years in Oxfordshire than was formerly the case that I quite enjoyed hearing so much of it,