Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/536

502 adult bird in Pwllheli harbour. The Kittiwake breeds on one range of very high cliffs; I saw the eggs. Mr. Coward mentions two other breeding stations. The Lesser Tern seemed scarce. I found two pairs some miles apart, and spent a long time watching these beautiful birds hawking over the shallows, with their beaks pointing straight down, to descend presently with a splash, and rise with a small fish held crosswise. The ordinary cry is "squek," uttered rapidly two or three times, or a single "kik," which changes to a loud angry "jek" when the birds are aroused. Mr. Coward has seen either Common or Arctic Terns off the coast.

Although the headlands of Lleyn are bold and high (Cilan, 340 ft.; Mynydd Mawr, upwards of 400 ft.; Mynydd Annelog, 500 ft.; Graig ddu, 700 ft.), sheer cliffs dropping at once from the highest level, like those of Flamborough Head, do not occur. The way of these is rather to slope down—often rapidly, indeed, with a face more or less broken—for some distance, and end in a sheer cliff of, comparatively speaking, no great height, and perhaps an outwork of jagged rocks formed by the wearing of the sloping strata. Sometimes little rocky holms, parted from the cliff, lie just off shore. When these steep slopes are covered with heather or dwarf gorse, or much broken, with outcropping rocks, it is easy to approach the cliff-edge; but when, as is often the case, these great slopes are steep as a house-roof, somewhat hog-backed, and merely covered with short turf (doubly short and slippery when I was there after a long spell of dry weather), the risk of a slip, with small chance of a recovery, becomes too great. On one of these slopes I caught the Irish Burnet Moth, which Mr. Coward discovered there some years ago. Swarms of Puffins inhabit St. Tudwal's Island. As you approach the island you pass through great numbers scattered over the sea, and they sit in masses on the land; the turf in places is riddled with their holes, and the air is full of birds coming and going. Towards dusk many more come in from distant feeding grounds. There is also another great colony on Mercrosse, on the west side, and in a less degree on the grassy slope up from the landing-place. Puffins were sitting there, thickly gathered, on the flattened-down turf and sea-pink; perhaps a third as many more were on the sea, and at least another