XXI 



THE PEREGRINE 



"Wide around 



With distant awe, in airy rings they rove." 



THOMSON. 



^ I ^HE peregrine falcon is one of as perched disdainfully often on one 

 those birds which, owing to leg on a commanding pinnacle or 

 the sequestration of its haunts, and ledge far up some mighty ocean cliff, 

 because it does not advertise itself in it surveys its surroundings with the 

 the same way as many of its congen- keenest of keen brown eyes ? Nothing 

 ers, has wrongly acquired the reputa- escapes its penetrating gaze ; it looks 

 tion of surpassing rarity in Great as it rightly is a very king of the 

 Britain. Such, however, is hardly feathered creation. Or again, watch 

 the case, for whilst admittedly the its impetuous, death-dealing stoop, as 

 bird is not common in the general with closed pinions it literally hurls 

 acceptance of the term, an examina- itself a living steel-tinted wedge 

 tion will show that it breeds in practi- at its panic-stricken victim, when both 

 cally every county which can boast destroyer and destroyed reel crash- 

 littoral cliffs of any altitude, including ing towards the ground, the former 

 the dazzling precipices of Kent and rising obliquely to avoid probable 

 Sussex ; and also in the various death, certain disablement, the lat- 

 groups of islands, as well as in some ter an inert, bloody, crumpled mass 

 of their outlying islets. It is also a of feathers to rise no more. Some- 

 habitue of a good many inland rocky times, however, the slayer binds to its 

 resorts, notably in several of the Welsh quarry in mid air. But the peregrine 

 Counties, Yorkshire, the Lake Dis- is not so infallible in its " shikar " as 

 trict, and, more plentifully, in the people imagine, and I have repeatedly 

 deer-forests of Scotland ; whilst in the seen hunted birds deliberately thwart 

 Green Isle it is, for a bird of its class, it, either by flying over the sea or a 

 quite abundant. lough, or by hugging the ground, in 

 The peregrine is out and away the which case the falcon dare not let itself 

 grandest bird we possess. For who go for fear of being unable to swoop 

 can but admire its strikingly symme- up quickly enough to avoid impact 

 trical form and superbly cut outline, with the land or water. 



