68 HILL BIRDS OF SCOTLAND 



grine relies rather on the powerful thrusts of his clean- 

 cut wings. WTien pursuing his prey in grim earnest, a 

 Peregrine in good training has been reckoned to fly at the 

 rate of no less than 150 miles an hour, a speed which the 

 Eagle could not attain to unless she was aided by a follow- 

 ing wind of great strength. A Golden Plover is also a 

 bird with considerable powers of flight, and as it is able 

 to swerve and twist in the most perplexing manner, it 

 never yields up its life to the Peregrine until after a stern 

 bid for freedom. On one occasion a Peregrine chased a 

 Golden Plover for ten minutes at top speed. At the 

 end of that period the unlucky Plover was exhausted by 

 its efforts and was taken in mid-air. The Plover tribe 

 do not, I think, realise that their best hope of safety lies 

 in their precipitating themselves into the heather like the 

 Grouse, for they continue to rely on their wing power 

 to enable them to escape until they are exhausted. The 

 most striking feature of the Peregrine's flight is its " stoop- 

 ing " powers. Such " stoops " or rushes earthward are 

 not made use of only when the object is to capture prey : 

 they are carried out for the mere joy of flight, and even 

 when their nesting site is visited and their eggs or young 

 are in danger, both Peregrines may be seen periodically to 

 mount up into the sky and then shoot do"\vn with tightly- 

 closed wings at terrific speed. \^Tien the male and female 

 Peregrines are thus seen together, the superiority in the 

 size of the Falcon is well marked. The weight of the male 

 is about two pounds, while that of the female reaches 

 three — a striking difference. . . . Considering the com- 

 parative scarcity of the species in this country, the ease and 

 rapidity with which a survivor finds a new mate, when the 

 latter had been shot, is quite noteworthy. It has been 

 suggested that the survivor makes its way across the North 

 Sea and produces a mate from the Continent ; and, indeed, 

 for a bird with such fine powers of flight this performance 

 would be by no means impossible. 



