2 THE PEREGRINE FALCON. 



a considerable height in the air, the cause of their solicitude 

 being two of their young, which had apparently just quitted 

 the nest, and which were seen perched on a projecting angle 

 of the rock.-^ 



The Eev. Andrew Baird, in his report on the united 

 parishes of Cockburnspath and Oldcambus written for the 

 Neiu Statistical Account of Scotland in 1834, states that 

 the " Hunting Hawk " is frequently seen on the Eedheugh 

 Coast.^ 



Mr. Eobert Cowe, Oldcastles, who lived at Dowlaw for 

 many years, has informed me that, from 1839 to 1850, it 

 nested regularly every season near Fast Castle ; and Mr. 

 Archibald Hepburn, who contributed many interesting notes 

 to Macgillivray's History of British Birds, records in 1850 

 that " four pairs of the Peregrine Falcon breed on the coast 

 of Berwickshire ; one at Burnmouth, one at Petticowick 

 Cove to the west of St. Abb's, one at Ernesheugli, and a 

 fourth at Fast Castle." ^ My friend Mr. Hardy, Oldcambus, 

 writes that the Peregrine nested at Halternsloup near Cold- 

 ingham Shore in 1836 and 1853, and has occasionally bred 

 in a steep, massive rock,^ a short distance to the east of the 

 Eammel Cove, since 1856. He adds that it had its eyrie 

 at Fast Castle, Whitcheugh, and near Burnmouth, in 1.857, 

 and that it was from the last-mentioned locality that Mr. 

 Baird of Newbyth sometimes got his Falcons.^ Mr. Eobert 

 Calder, Little Swinton, who spent his youth at Fairnieside, 

 a farm on the coast near Burnmouth, of which his father 

 was tenant, relates that the Peregrine often nested, previous 

 to 1857, in "the cliff of the high perpendicular rock over- 



1 Hist. Ber. A'at. Club, vol. i. p. 21. 



- JVew Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. ii. (Berwickshire), p. 299. 

 ■> Hist. Be)-. Nat. Club, vol. iii. p. 71. 



■^ Mr. Hardy .say.s tliat an old llsliuriaau named James Fairbairu, who lived at tlie 

 Cov.', told him that loug ago the. Raven used to have its nest ou this rock. 

 5 Letter from Mr. Hardy, Oldcambus, dated the 5tli of November 1884. 



