Northern Observations of Inland Birds 97 



dog, to catch up with us. While we stood talking we 

 heard a loud clap behind us, and looking round we saw 

 a bird, which we took to be a wild duck, but which may 

 have been a grey hen, spinning to earth amidst a cloud 

 of feathers, while the peregrine that had struck it down 

 had recovered and was rocketting vertically skywards in 

 order to exhaust the impulse of his death-dealing descent. 

 The impact must have taken place at least two hundred 

 yards distant from us, yet the report of it was startlingly 

 loud, much resembling the sound that would be caused 

 by striking a wet peat bank with a heavy stick. On 

 another occasion we were walking the same hillside 

 when a hen pheasant got up well out of range, and headed 

 straight for the woods below and about a mile away, flying 

 at a considerable altitude. I did not witness the incident, 

 though the keeper, who was about a hundred yards 

 distant from me, described it later. Ere the pheasant 

 gained the wood it was struck down by a peregrine, and 

 fell a matter of perhaps three hundred feet. The pere- 

 grine did not descend for it, but flew straight on, and 

 going up the keeper found the game bird to be a mere 

 pulp of broken and crumpled feathers. Its head was 

 missing and it was completely disembowelled ! 



The peregrine has often been known to fly through a 

 pack of young grouse, killing and maiming them im- 

 partially, and not even troubling to pick up those it had 

 so wantonly destroyed. Such activities on the part 

 of this noble bird are much to be regretted, but there is 

 no harm in recording them since the men who are to decide 

 the peregrine's fate, namely our moorland keepers, know 

 the bird's disposition too well to gain or lose anything 

 by what might be written here. I say without hesitation 

 that the peregrine, the hooded crow, and the carrion 

 crow are far and away the most destructive of our birds 

 of prey, but the peregrine has its beauty and its rarity 



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