BIRDS OF PEEY. 45 



immense amount of exercise in the keen 

 mountain air, will not taste food again for 48 

 hours, which we think few will believe. Or 

 that he will eat carrion, which is known not to 

 be the case. A bird a day is probably the mini- 

 mum each hawk will kill for himself. That 

 amounts to 730 birds for the pair. But in 

 rearing their three young ones (and the 

 sparrow-hawk and merlin have more than 

 three), from the time they are hatched in the 

 month of May until they drive them away 

 in the autumn, 100 birds for each young hawk 

 will be found a very small allowance, yet this 

 makes 1,030 birds ; and we are far under the 

 real estimate, for we have known a pair of 

 falcons watched and seen to bring six grouse 

 to their young ones in four hours, shortly after 

 they had left the nest, the young hawks rising 

 a little way each time to meet their parents in 

 the air, snatching the birds from them, and 

 descending to fight over them. This is the 

 actual destruction, and will some naturahst 



