90 MR CARR ON THE FLIGHT OF THE PEREGRINE FALCON 



commonest native species glide past us in their full freedom, it is 

 found impossible not to stop and turn to watch their movements. 

 Such a feeling of admiration for birds upon the wing, is not un- 

 common in boyhood, and may be quite unconnected with any wish 

 to capture or possess them. In my own case, it was not only strong 

 at that age, but has remained undiminished until now, often relieving 

 the weariness of a journey on foot or horseback, not to mention .the 

 much more wearisome penance of coach or railway. It is always 

 some advantacre if a man's thoujrhts can be amused, and blue 

 demons kept at bay, by a swift, a sandpiper, a tern, or a pair of 

 peewits ; and if he can look at a flock of golden plovers, a chain of 

 wild-geese, a company of seagulls, or a hawk of any kind, with the 

 same sort of pleasure that is felt by every body in observing the 

 symmetry, and fine movements of a race-horse or a red-deer. 



To every one who can understand the fascination of this part of 

 an ornithologist's pleasure, the Peregrine Falcon cannot fail to be a 

 most interesting bird. It is not only one of the strongest and most 

 graceful flyers among the rapacious tribes, but is second only to 

 the Iceland Falcon in peculiar associations connected with the fal- 

 coner's venerable craft, and so, even with poetical and historical 

 lore. I cannot but hope, that the ultimate tendency of Societies like 

 ours, for promoting and calling into action a love for natural science, 

 in all its branches, will be to induce gentlemen to protect all our finest 

 indigenous birds in their favourite haunts, and especially around 

 their breeding places : that many will be led to look at the tower- 

 ing eyrie of a Peregrine, upon a moorland precipice or sea-beaten 

 cliff", with more pleasure than on the brood of grouse, for the sake of 

 which the gamekeeper would have prepared his gun and his traps 

 against their nobler neighbours ; a pastime, for which our ancestors 

 wojjld have condemned him to entrap mice in a prison, and for 

 which Mr Waterton would justly ** throttle him." 



Prejudice, and a too scanty knowledge concerning the habits of 

 the falcon, are the cause of this needless and utterly tasteless perse- 

 cution. Grouse are undoubtedly now and then brought to the eyrie 

 among the numbers of rooks, plovers, starlings, pigeons, " cushats," 

 and sea-fowl, that make up the principal sustenance of the ravenous 

 young inmates ; but they are not the grouse of the adjoining moor, 

 or of any place within three or four miles. All those in the neigh- 

 bourhood must have seen the falcons a hundred times going to and 

 from the eyrie, and it would require the gamekeeper and all his dogs 



