vou. x1.}| FIELD-NOTES ON THE HOBBY. 51 
On July 10th, the bird was sitting as we approached the 
eyrie at 3 p.m. The day was warm and sunny, and the tail 
of the falcon and the tips of her wings were visible over the 
edge of the nest. The wings apparently reached just to 
the end of the tail, as seen through glasses from about thirty 
yards away. The keeper now made a detour in order to 
frighten her off in our direction, and hearing his approach 
she sprang to the side of the nest and sat bolt upright, re- 
maining in this position, alert for danger, and almost motion- 
less for nearly a minute, affording us a grand view. She 
then dashed off, first dropping, then rising, with a few beats 
of her powerful wings, over the tree-tops right over our 
position and away out of view without uttering a single 
sound. We sat down to await her return, and not until an 
hour anda quarter had passed, at 4.15, did we see her sail 
by, settle for a moment and again vanish. Another three- 
quarters of an hour passed and we saw no more of her. On 
our rising, however, she sailed away from a neighbouring 
tree, where she had presumably been perched to watch 
events, without making a sound, and we then left the 
vicinity, without having seen the male all the afternoon. 
It must be borne in mind that the observation of these dashing 
little woodland falcons is extremely difficult, even at the 
eyrie, on account of the leafy shade of the wood, which is very 
thick and dense at this time of the year. 
On June 23rd, we visited a large tract of woodland nearly 
a thousand acres in extent in the west midlands, situated on 
the slopes of a small hill, with many other large woods in the 
neighbourhood. A stream winds round this wood, which 
contains a heronry consisting of some sixty pairs of birds. 
The site of the old heronry is some distance from the present 
one, many of the trees having been felled, which caused the 
birds to desert their former haunts. Three very old Heron’s 
nests still remained in the original site. In one of these a 
pair of Hobbys had made their home each year, and had 
usually reared their young in safety. On this occasion the 
eyrie contained three eggs incubated about one week, and 
laid on the bare sticks with no lining of any sort. The nest 
was at the top of a medium-sized oak, about thirty feet high, 
almost in the middle of the wood, which is fairly open here, 
and commands a wide range of view. As seems to be 
frequently the case, both with this falcon and the Sparrow- 
Hawk, a ride through the wood passed close to this nest. 
The falcons had been observed frequently during mid-May, 
chiefly round the outskirts of the wood, but during the 
