242 WOODLANDERS AND FIELD FOLK 



and peregrine building within about thirty feet of 

 each other, and both had eggs as early as the last 

 week of March. This bird, with its swift- whirring 

 wings, bringing death and devastation, is in keeping 

 with the spirit of the mountains; but like all the 

 rarer birds of prey it is fast becoming extinct. In 

 a few years it too will have passed from the moun- 

 tains and from our fast-diminishing fauna. 



The hobby is the rarest of the falcons, and occur 

 only at long intervals, when on their autumnal 

 migration. Fascinating it is to watch the hobby 

 performing its wonderful aerial evolutions or lark- 

 hawking far up against the blue. It destroys 

 numerous small birds, and in summer adroitly 

 captures on the wing many of the large flying insects 

 and beetles. Its two or three bright eggs are laid 

 in a nest in some high tree a nest not always made 

 by the hobbies themselves. Not unfrequently in 

 autumn and during rough weather the stormy 

 petrel is picked up dead or exhausted among the hills. 

 So many examples of these interesting little birds 

 have occurred in this way that the fact may be worth 

 recording. 



