Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/474

404 come across them on the bare bracken-covered limestone uplands which constitute the Deer Park, where they were no doubt feeding on the ants which swarmed beneath the stones. It was strange to continually hear the laughing cry of the bird in a district so dissimilar from the well-timbered park-land which we usually associate with the species in Cheshire.

The hollow trees in the dell provide accommodation for a large colony of Tree-Sparrows—a bird whose distribution in Wales is but little known. Many pairs, too, were nesting in the walnuts and ashes in the Priory grounds, and we noted a single isolated pair in a hedgerow sycamore near the schoolhouse at Penmon. On June 3rd and 4th we saw several birds carrying nesting materials into holes, presumably preparing for a second brood. House-Sparrows were often nesting in the same trees as the smaller species, and in two cases at least their untidy structures were visible in the loose foundations of nests in the rookery. The pushful Starling was, as might be expected, abundant. At Penmon birds were feeding young in the old Woodpeckers' holes; while in old walls, cottage roofs, the limestone cliffs, and trees in the woods, every likely hole was occupied by Starlings. During the first week in June numbers of birds were still busily feeding young in the nest, but many others had packed, and flocks of two to three hundred individuals were roosting in the old thorns in Penmon Park.

Several pairs of Spotted Flycatchers and Creepers were nesting in the dell, and Wood-Wrens, Whitethroats, Blackcaps, Willow-Wrens, and Bullfinches in the undergrowth. The Wren, of course, was common here; we found a nest in an unusual situation—suspended at the extremity of a drooping branch of elder, concealed by the surrounding leaves.

At midday on June 1st, when one of us was sitting beneath the trees, a male Siskin alighted in the lower branches of an ash, not fifteen paces away. Its forked tail, greenish plumage, greystriped flanks, and black crown, forehead, and throat showed clearly in the strong sunlight. Subsequently we both searched for the bird on many occasions, but without success.

The stream that trickles through the dell is dammed, forming a little tree-sheltered pool, where a pair of Moorhens had a brood, and where at dusk the Pipistrelles hawked for flies,