Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/36

10 grow a kind of willow for bands, present a greater growth of elder, bramble, and tall weeds. And there, and along a bank near one of them, I found many of the small birds I noticed. The banks are gay with thrift, vernal squill, the sweetly-scented burnet-rose, gorse, sea-campion, and a few foxgloves; and I saw some dwarf bluebells and the lady's-fingers (Anthyllis). Excellent samphire (Crithmum maritimum) grows in abundance on the low rocks, and has been gathered for a hundred years at least.

On the east side the coast of Bardsey presents a front of dark coloured rock to the restless sea. Here on the sloping rockfaces, and the ledges, the Herring-Gulls, which breed there in considerable numbers, are conspicuous. The steep shelving rocks are varied with more precipitous faces, overhung ledges, hollows, and chasms. Along the coast of the lower lying parts of the island there is a broad breastwork of broken jagged rock, high enough sometimes to form low cliffs, and indented with yawning chasms, whose sides are high and steep enough in some cases to accommodate the Chough. Where these rocks merge into the short weedy turf the Oystercatchers breed, the pairs flying on to the outer rocks as one approaches, where they sit and cry "feet," or "fic" or "pic," an unlimited number of times, and sometimes "my feet." Rock-Pipits flit about too; I hesitate to say breed, for I think of the hours I have spent in an always unsuccessful search for this bird's nest. Where the one little inlet affords a harbour and safe lying for the boats, a stretch of sand and seaweedy rocks is uncovered at low tide. Bardsey is included in Willughby's 'Ornithology' (1678), among the list "Of some remarkable Isles, Cliffs, and Rocks about England, where Sea-fowl do yearly build and breed in great numbers," but no particulars relating to it are given. I do not, however, think that Bardsey could have been a great sea-fowl station within the period of modern history. The then Vicar of Aberdaron (in whose parish Bardsey lies), in the account of the island with which he furnished Bingley in 1798, asserts, it is true, that "among these precipices the intrepid inhabitants, in the spring of the year, employ themselves in collecting the eggs of the various species of sea-fowl that frequent them"; and he describes the manner of climbing pursued in collecting the eggs and the samphire. The Bardsey men gather eggs now, but these are all,