NOTES. 85 



THE PEREGRINE FALCON ON THE YORKSHIRE 

 CLIFFS. 



Allow me to offer a few comments on Mr. A. D. Sapsworth's 

 article in your July number. Mr. Sapsworth's remarks seem 

 to leave room for a doubt as to the Peregrine Falcon's not 

 breeding in 1904. The birds, male and female, were seen at 

 Speeton Cliff on 24th April, 1904, by Mr. T. Andas, near the 

 place known as Old Man's Head. On the Saturday following 

 Mr. Andas and myself passed the same place, but as no birds 

 were then about, and as no more were seen again that year 

 up to at any rate the end of the climbing season, there can be 

 no room for doubt that they did not remain to breed, as all 

 the range of cliff is climbed for eggs of Guillemots, and if the 

 Falcons were there they would not be long in letting everyone 

 know of their presence. 



Again, as regards the height of the cliff at Falcon's Nest, 

 where they bred in 1908 and 1909, the climbing ropes used 

 by the Hodgsons, which are the longest in use at any part of 

 the cliffs, are made 95 yards long only, and reach to within 

 about 15 yards of the bottom at this point, so that 330 feet is 

 nearer the height than the 400 feet stated. In fact there is no 

 sheer cliff 400 feet high even at Speeton where the greatest 

 height is reached, the bank of glacial drift which caps the chalk 

 above the precipice hardly rising to this height above sea-level. 

 The eyrie is as nearly 200 feet from the top as possible, and 

 this is about two-thirds of the way down. The photograph 

 of "The Dorr" as the Falcons' breeding place in 1906 and 

 1907 is misleading. The actual place is east of the view 

 shown, at a clinib called Black Hole, quite invisible from the 

 top of the cliff, and in 1907 the birds had shifted a few yards 

 west of their 1906 breeding ground. H. Man*, on whose 

 climbing the birds were, has always maintained that two 

 young only were reared in each year. 



E. W. Wade. 



The article on the Peregrine Falcon on the Yorkshire Cliffs 

 (supra, p. 52) omits reference to a pair which nested at 

 Redchff, between Scarborough and Filey, in the spring of 

 1901. Four eggs were laid, which were plainly visible through 

 glasses from the cliff top, and four young ones were safely 

 reared. One of the adults was shot in the following September, 

 and an immature bird, possibly belonging to this brood, was 

 killed at Filey about the same time. The following year 

 a pair of Falcons returned to the same place and nested, the 



