230 Poachers and Poaching. 



the snows of winter drive them to the lowlands 

 in search of food. As the hooded crow is only 

 a seasonable visitant, it is but little felt as a 

 poacher. The keeper has the shrikes or butcher- 

 birds in his black list, but these do little harm, 

 as their shambles in the blackthorns abundantly 

 prove. 



Mention of the noble peregrine marks a 

 poacher of the first water. As the bird sits 

 watching from the jag of a mountain crag, it is 

 the very emblem of passive speed and strength. 

 Nowhere but in the birds' haunts can these 

 attributes be seen to perfection. A trained 

 falcon is slow of flight and uncertain of aim as 

 compared with a wild bird. Its symmetry, its 

 stretch of wing, its keen eyes and cruel talons,, 

 all speak to the same end. While some of the 

 larger hawks are treated with indifference by the 

 bird-world, not so the peregrine. A pair of 

 buzzards pass over, but the cheep and chatter of 

 field and hedgerow go on. A peregrine sails 

 down dale and all is hushed ! A strange 

 experience this at noon in the heyday of summer 

 but the shadow of the peregrine stills all life. 

 A terrified screech is heard, and bird life seeks 

 the thickest retreats. The depredations of the 

 peregrine are greatest, of course, during the 

 breeding season ; and at this time it even carries 

 off the newly-born lambs of the small, black-faced 

 mountain sheep. Now hardly anything comes 



