216 FIELD-STUDIES OF RARER BIRDS 



easy touch of cliffs, which I well knew harboured 

 eyries, often without seeing a Peregrine at all. 

 Confiding though our Peregrines are on the south 

 coast owing to comparatively heavy traffic, yet, in 

 regions where human beings and their devices are 

 scarce, the birds are correspondingly wild and shy. 

 ' Wild as a hawk " is then an adage well applied 

 to the Peregrine. 



Whilst admittedly the Peregrine is not common 

 in the general acceptance of that term, an examina- 

 tion of its range in Britain will show r that there is 

 hardly a headland or cliff range of any altitude 

 round our entire coast line, inclusive of the big 

 groups of islands, as well as many a steep-sided, 

 rocky islet, where a pair of these noble birds do 

 not at least attempt to breed annually : while with 

 some few modifications the same may be said for 

 certain inland mountain-ranges in Ireland, Cambria, 

 the Lakes, Yorkshire, and Scotland, where in 

 some areas notably in Westmorland and parts of 

 south-central Wales to specify the species has 

 well come to the fore, even of recent years. This 

 is quite an anomaly when we recollect how almost 

 every keeper's hand is turned against the " hunting 

 hawk " on account of its very real depredations 

 amongst " game " ; because of which, in many of 

 the Scottish highlands the Peregrine may almost 

 be accounted a rare bird. That it would soon 

 reinstate itself there if allowed, is self-evident from 

 the persistent way in which a favourite site is often 



