136 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



He adopted the advice, and with so much 

 success that he afterwards told a friend of mine, 

 who happened to cross his path, that whether 1 

 knew anything about birds or not I had certainly 

 taught him one of the best ways of catching rats 

 that he " had ever tried or heard tell of." 



At one place in the Hebrides, where we stayed 

 for a few days, we became on very good terms with 

 a gamekeeper who was much troubled by several 

 pairs of Peregrine Falcons that were, with the help 

 of Golden Eagles and other birds of prey, com- 

 mitting sad havoc amongst the Grouse breeding on 

 his beat. 



We accompanied him one day on a long journey, 

 which he undertook in order to try to shoot a 

 female Peregrine as she flew from her eyrie, 

 situated in a horizontal fissure running for a yard 

 or two along the face of a gigantic precipice. 

 We climbed to the foot of the cliff, and when the 

 keeper had sufficiently regained his breath to enable 

 him to take aim with tolerable certainty I made a 

 noise to disturb the sitting bird, but in vain, she 

 would not stir a feather. Thereupon our friend 

 drew one of his " wire " cartridges, and putting in a 

 smokeless ordinary, straightway fired. The Falcon 

 instantly darted out, and before the reverberations of 

 his first shot had commenced to kiss the rocks across 

 the loch at our feet the keeper had dispatched his 

 second message of lead heavenwards in pursuit of 

 the fleeing bird. But the distance was too great to 

 permit of any damage being done, and after flying 

 round and round high overhead for a little while 

 uttering her wailing alarm note " Kek, kek, kek y 

 kek," the Peregrine came down, boldly alighted on 

 a jutting crag, and watched us calmly from her 

 coign of vantage some three hundred feet above. 



