HAWKS AND OWLS. 5 



Or if lie is away from his own nesting- place, and owns 

 no watch-tower on the crags, the peregrine will scour the 

 heather and search the higher glens with an eagerness it 

 is curious to watch. But his distinctive and peculiar process 

 is the calm watch from an elevated spot until a victim is 

 espied, and then a single impetuous rush. The gulls who go 

 up to moorlands to breed are occasionally harried by him, 

 wild ducks and waterfowl suffering too. So deadly is the 

 onslaught of this hawk, whose flight has been calculated to. 

 reach the figure of one hundred and twenty miles an hour, 

 that a tiercel has been known to strike the head clean off 

 a mallard at a single "souse," and has driven a partridge 

 so fiercely to the ground by the shock of the encounter, that 

 the bird has rebounded the height of a man. 



I have called this wonderfully graceful bird patriotic,, 

 and he stays with us all the year round, but in the spring 

 our indigenous peregrines are greatly augmented by arrivals 

 from abroad. Old Belon, two hundred years ago, gives 

 a curious account of the incredible armies of hawks and 

 kites which he saw in the spring crossing the Thracian 

 Bosphorus from Asia to Europe, a procession swelled by 

 whole troops of eagles and vultures ; and from Syria and 

 Africa come many of the birds that are with us all the 

 summer, to the delight of naturalists. 



Upon the sea coast, where the peregrine is generally 

 found now, he does no manner of harm, contenting himself 

 with the ample booty sea-ledges or puffin-haunted caves afford. 

 When a pair have once selected such a fastness over- 

 looking blue water, they and their descendants will occupy 

 the same eyrie year after year. When falconry was at the 

 height of its popularity, these breeding-places were all known 

 and jealously guarded. The site of a nest was placed under 

 especial care of the occupier of land adjoining, and they 

 were responsible by terms of tenure for the noble birds and 

 their offspring. The loss of a right hand was the penalty for 

 molesting breeding birds. 



