580 Mr. W. R. Ogilvie Grant on the 



ledge we tried to reacli for the next two days^ but as there 

 was no getting at it I lost the bird. The other bird was 

 busy wlien I left, bringing up the family, which have my very 

 best wishes ! It was indeed a lovely sight to see the pair 

 of Peregrines, as black as coal on the back, with the skin 

 round the eye, as well as the cere and feet, bright yellow, and 

 their chests reddish brown and white, shading into deep ash- 

 blue on the underparts. They were sitting within twenty 

 yards of me and did not seem much disturbed by my 

 presence, as one of them deliberately scratched its head with 

 its foot ! The only thing tbey did not like was a biscuit-box 

 on the end of a rattan-cane which we sent over the cliff to 

 move the female. I did not get over losing the bird for 

 days." 



Through the kindness of Mr. W. Eagle Clarke, I have been 

 able to examine the immature Peregrine from Negros which 

 he referred to Falco atriceps, Hume [cf. Ibis, 1895, p. 476). 

 This bird is, as I felt sure it must be, an immature example 

 of Falco ernesti, Sharpe, which is really a very distinct form 

 of F. atriceps, the type of which is before me. F. atriceps 

 is no doubt synonymous with F. peregrinator, Sundev. [cf. 

 Blanford, Faun. Brit. Ind., Birds, iii. p. 415 (1895)]. In 

 adults of the latter the predominating colour of the under- 

 parts, including the sides and flanks, is rich reddish brown, 

 tawny, or buff, and the black bars, if present, are wider apart 

 and not nearly so strongly marked ; whereas in adults of 

 F. ernesti, though the breast is occasionally washed with 

 fulvous, the sides, flanks, and belly are dark slate-grey or 

 bluish grey, and the whole of the under surface below the 

 crop is thickly covered with rather wide, close-set black bars, 

 giving these parts a very dark appearance. 



Even among immature examples F. ernesti is easily 

 distinguished from F. pereginnator , the whole plumage being 

 much darker and the oblong marking on the under surface 

 much blacker. In the immature bird recorded by Mr. Clarke, 

 one feather of the adult plumage is present on the left flank, 

 and this alone is sufficient to identify the bird as F. ernesti. 



It seems pretty certain that F. peregrinator is not found in 



