Mediterranean Ornithology. 275 



nestj from which the young birds had apparently flown very 

 recently. The Blue Rock Thrush is the characteristic species 

 of these barren rocky islands, and during our boat-cruises in 

 tlie straits, between the 2nd and 15th of May, we seldom 

 passed an hour without having one or two Ospreys in sight, 

 though we could not succeed in discovering their nesting- 

 place. My son shot a third specimen of Audouin's Gull 

 over the stern of the yacht shortly after our return on board 

 about sunset. Some Neapolitan fishermen brought us an 

 enormous skate, a shark (which I made out by the aid of 

 ' Couch ^ to be Squalus squatina), and some very fine 

 lobsters. On the morning of May 4th we went off early 

 to the Falcon's cliff; three or four of our crew landed and 

 managed to climb to a broad ledge apparently some 30 feet 

 above the nest, and thence lowered a rope by which the old 

 Trojan, after a rough scramble over the huge rocks at the 

 cliff's foot, was easily hauled up to the hole. This from the 

 sea had very much the appearance of having been made by a 

 cannon-ball or shell, but was large enough to admit the head 

 and shoulders of our cragsman, who came rapidly down the 

 rope with two young Falcons, male and female, fairly fea- 

 thered, but with a good deal of down still on them — in fact, 

 in a state that a falconer would call just " fit to take." These 

 young birds were, without question, of the race which Mr. J. 

 H. Gurney has, in 'The Ibis' for 1882, p. 310, identified 

 as the Falco punicus of Le Vaillant — a very distinct bird 

 from the F. barbarus of 0, Salvin, ' Ibis,' 1859, and the true 

 F, minor, Bp. [peregrinoides, Smith), as quoted by Mr. Dres- 

 ser in his 'Birds of Europe;' but in my opinion identical 

 with F. brookii of Mr. R. B. Sharpe, and without doubt the 

 Barbary Falcon of most, if not all, of our old English authors 

 on falconry. My reasons for coming to this conclusion are 

 the extreme rarity on the Mediterranean shores of the Falcon 

 to which the designation of "Barbary" is now given, the 

 comparative abundance of F. punicus in Morocco and the 

 islands of the western basin of that sea, and the fact that 

 most of the old authors who give any description of the 

 " Barbary Falcon " pretty accurately point out the differences 



