GYR-FALCON. 35 



volume of the Transactions of the Linnean Society, men- 

 tion is made of a specimen that was shot on Bungay 

 Common. By the kindness of Mr. Allis of York, I have 

 heard that a very fine adult specimen was shot within a 

 few miles of that city on the 15th March 1837. One of 

 the specimens now in the Museum of Newcastle-upon- 

 Tyne was killed in Northumberland ; in the month of 

 January of the present year, 1 845, an Iceland Falcon was 

 shot near the North Tyne. Pennant possessed one that 

 was shot near Aberdeen. Mr. Low in his Fauna of Ork- 

 ney, considered the Gyr- Falcon as only an occasional 

 visitor : Mr. Bullock, when he visited the Orkneys, saw 

 one sitting on a stone wall in the island of Stronsa ; but its 

 appearance has not been observed by more recent Ornitho- 

 logists. As before mentioned, its true habitat appears to 

 be in higher northern latitudes, Norway, Iceland, Green- 

 land, Siberia, Russia, and occasionally the north of Ger- 

 many ; but apparently in no country more plentiful than 

 in North America. Dr. Richardson says, " We saw it 

 often during our journeys over the Barren Grounds, where 

 its habitual prey is the Ptarmigan, but where it also de- 

 stroys Plover, Ducks, and Geese.* 1 ' 



Major Sabine, in his Memoir on the Birds of Greenland, 

 says, " The progress of this bird from youth, when it is 

 quite brown, to the almost perfect whiteness of its ma- 

 turity, forms a succession of changes in which each indi- 

 vidual feather gradually loses a portion of its brown co- 

 lour as the white edging on the margin increases in breadth 

 from year to year." Dr. Richardson also, who has had 

 favourable opportunities for observing this species at dif- 

 ferent ages, says, " The young Gyr-Falcons show little 

 white on their plumage, being mostly of a dull brown co- 

 lour above. As they grow older, the white margins en- 



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