Raptorial Birds of the Solway Area. 329 



Peregrine Falcon 



we have still a good many resident birds. Those who are 

 familiar with the Colvend heughs will often have seen the couple, 

 resident on those cliffs, dash out amongst the Herring Gulls there. 

 Pairs are found in summer on several suitable parts of the Gallo- 

 way coast. I believe there may be 8 to 12 pairs on the shore line. 

 There are as many, perhaps more, on inland sites. In Dumfries- 

 shire it is much scarcer, and there being no shore cliffs, it is 

 confined to the Moffat hills and Upper Nithsdale near the 

 Stewartry boundary. But there is an awful drain, year by year, 

 ty the keepers on these birds. It is curious how persistently 

 birds turn up each recurring season to take the place of the 

 slaughtered ones. 



At the migration seasons some very fine examples are often 

 got, more particularly in autumn, when "passage falcons" are 

 seen now and then. These are mostly fine, large, dark, 

 beautifully-plumaged birds in the feather of the first autumn. 



Altogether, the Peregrine is by no means a rare bird, and is 

 to be noted in most of at least one's longer rambles. On a 

 recent date, when on the wide sands west of Southerness Point, 

 along with some friends, we heard a faint call, that after some 

 discussion we assigned to the Peregrine. But we could not see 

 it anywhere around. The calls being repeated, we located them 

 from skywards, and, putting the binoculars on, we found three 

 specks high in air. We considered the birds to be one old and 

 two young, and we watched them for nearly half an hour go 

 through a pretty set of aerial manoeuvres. A systematic search 

 with the glasses will often reveal a Peregrine high in the heavens, 

 and it is a most charming sight to see this finest of all the Falcons 

 pursuing its strong and rapid flight in those wide circles it seems 

 to delight in. 



We now come to the Peregrine's miniature, the active and 

 beautiful little 



Hobby. 



Up till the last week or two there was only one good record 

 ■of the Hobby in Solway — a specimen shot on Rockhall in 1866, 

 not in 1867, as Gray has it. The other record I have referred 

 to is a Hobby shot near Carsethorn, and now preserved in the 

 nice little collection of local birds preserved by Mr Robert M'Call 

 Ihere. 



