4 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



gamekeepers and the like ; whilst in those cases where a taste 

 for game unquestionably characterizes birds of prey our advice 

 would be to strictly limit but not to eradicate the species. 



After the kites our two remaining birds of prey, the 

 lords of their kind, have already reached a Nirvana of well- 

 deserved protection. The golden eagle is already sacred in 

 the Highlands, while, as far as the osprey is concerned, most 

 lairds would rather lose their favourite piper than the 

 gallant fish-hawk honouring the lonely mountain tarns or 

 beetling sea cliffs by making them its home. 



Next to them, in the aristocracy of bulk, is the pere- 

 grine falcon. In approaching him I feel all the doubt of 

 the pleader who has an admirable and indomitable brigand 

 (a pirate, perhaps, would better fit the character of this 

 ocean-loving hawk) for a client. Perhaps the only safe 

 course to take is to throw ourselves on the mercy of the 

 court, to plead the picturesqueness, the gallantry, and the 

 patriotism of the peregrine ! That he likes game when game 

 is handy I cannot honestly deny. Fixing their home on the 

 higher peaks of some wild and lonely mountain range in 

 the North of England or Scotland, a pair will make their 

 eyrie where the gnarled trunk and contorted branches of 

 a birch or spruce jut out from the cliffs, inaccessible alike 

 from above or below, and there they cater for their noisy 

 young with a reckless disdain of tenant's rights and the lord 

 of the manor, which we acknowledge is shocking. There, 

 perched on a vantage-point of rock or storm-broken timber, 

 the peregrine will sit in the sunlight for an hour at a time 

 watching the heather or the glades in the hazel coppices far 

 below for grouse sunning themselves or young rabbits coining 

 out to play. It is surely worth the price of a moor- cock or 

 two, and an occasional leveret to watch this peerless falcon's 

 habits, to see his irresistible and unerring swoop that rarely 

 fails to lay a victim low, and the graceful rise which follows 

 and saves him from such certain destruction as his drop 

 seemed to court. - 



