Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/168

144 then rejoined its mate. Presently they all rose, flipped over the wall, and settled again to feed in a sheep pasture. I do not know what was the state of these birds' domestic arrangements, but they evidently had not got young; and their leisurely behaviour was very different from that of the busy pushful Jackdaws, which in a constant stream came up over a sheer cliff-edge and made their way to the fields, while a persistent succession of returning birds dropped into space and, wheeling round, made for the cliff-face. The numbers of Jackdaws breeding along this coast is astonishing, both here and in other parts of North Wales. Anyone watching the ways of the gentle Choughs must, I think, have the sad conviction forced upon them that these birds are not of the fittest to survive. Some Pigeons haunting the cliffs near the end of Pen Cilan, in company with Stock-Doves, were merely domestic Pigeons gone wild; they had no white on their backs. Trwyn Cilan is a magnificent headland, rising to a height of upwards of three hundred feet. At one spot is a grand perpendicular cliff-face, formed by a landslip, of nearly horizontal strata. It is somewhat irregular of outline, and slopes up from the east until it attains its height, and then merges into the long grassy gorse-dotted slope of the headland which has not slipped. At the foot of the cliff the mass of fallen rock and earth, which fell long ago, forms a steep green gorsy slope. The cliff-face is much weather-stained, grey-green in places with long hanging lichen, or brilliantly green with ivy, and brightened with a few patches of pink thrift and white sea-campion. Facing about south-east this cliff and undercliff afford a warm and sheltered spot for birds. A few Herring-Gulls and many Jackdaws were breeding; some Wheatears flitted about, and Rock-Pipits were pretty common. At the top the seaward slopes here, as elsewhere along this coast, were in some places coloured a pale grey-blue, so thickly did the beautiful little Scilla verna stud the turf. I found several plants bearing white flowers, and one with the blossoms white faintly tinged with pink. In more broken ground this delicate squill, thickly mingled with dwarf examples of dark blue Scilla nutans, produced a breadth of blended colour which would have called forth the admiration of the planter of the most formal bulb-beds. Herring-Gulls breed here and there all along the range of cliffs from Pistyll Cim to Hell's Mouth, as well as