THE PEREGRINE FALCON. 3 



hanging the well-known Gull Eock, and that Mr. Belany ^ 

 frequently got the young Falcons from the nest there, and 

 trained them, a man or boy being lowered down to the nest 

 by a rope." 



Two pairs of Falcons appear to have bred in the vicinity 

 of St. Abb's Head in 1859 f and in 1860 there was a nest 

 in the precipice at Hawksheugh immediately to the east of 

 Fast Castle, which seems to have been occupied on the 

 3rd of May 1865, when I visited that part of the coast 

 with Mr. William Cowe, Dowlaw, who showed me the cliff 

 at Hawksheugh up which his brother, Mr. Peter Cowe, was 

 drawn with a rope to get the young Falcons from their 

 eyrie in I860.'* 



Mr. John Wilson, Cliapelhill, Cockburnspath, has kindly 

 furnished me with the following interesting account of the 

 taking of the young Falcons from their eyrie in the preci- 

 pice at Hawksheugh in June 1866 — the parties engaged 

 in the adventure being Mr. Wilson, Mr. Frederick Smith, 

 Hoprig, and Mr. William Cowe, Dowlaw. " The nest," says 

 Mr. Wilson, " was just a little to the east of the castle, and 

 from that point we could see the young ones sitting in it. 

 We attached a blanket to a rope and dangled it over the 

 nest, so that the Hawks might strike at it, and we thought 

 we could draw them up to the top of the cliff while they 



1 Mr. James Cockburii Belauy was a surgeon in Aytou, and kept Hawks there at 

 one time. On tlie occasion of the Highland and Agricultural Society's Show at 

 Berwick, in 1841, he exhibited his Falcons tiying at Pigeons in the Magdalen 

 Fields. He wrote a treatise upon Falconry, which was printed in Berwick in the 

 above year. 



^ Letter from Mr. Robert (Jalder, Little Swinton, dated 29t]i November 1884. 



^ Hisi. Ber. Nat. Club, vol. iv. p. 131. 



■i Mr. Peter Cowe, Lochton, who formerly lived at Dowlaw, informed me on 

 the 5th of August 1886, that, in the beginning of June 1860, he took four young 

 Peregrines out of their nest in the precipice at Hawksheugh, immediately to the 

 east of Fast Castle. He was drawn up the face of tlic clifl' from the beach, by four 

 or live men stationed at the top of the rock, with a long rope, a chain being 

 attached to the upper jiart of the rope to come in contact with the rocks and thus' 

 prevent tlie danger of it chating on their sharp points. 



