A Massachusetts Duck Hawk Aery 51 



material were to be found on the littered ledge, and no egg-shells; bu 

 these would inevitably have been trodden down and covered up. The 

 youngsters had their crops distended, and fresh, bloody dove-feathers under 

 their feet revealed the character of the food they contained. Their cries 

 were very like their mother's, but weaker; and when they all screamed 

 together, as they did almost incessantly, the racket produced sounded, as 

 I have said, almost like the cackling of a flock of Guinea-fowl. 



I made three subsequent visits to the nest, with several trusted com- 

 panions, all sworn to refrain from molesting the birds or revealing their 

 whereabouts to other people. We used up two rolls of kodak films on the 

 seated young and the attacking mother ; but, owing to our inexperience, 

 and the fact that the sunlight was then deeply obscured by forest-fire 

 smoke, none of the pictures proved very good. 



The parents were usually away hunting when we reached the aery in 

 the afternoon, and only once or twice did we see them at home together. 

 On one of these occasions we watched them angrily put to rout an unfor- 

 tunate Red-tailed Hawk, who had wandered too near their young. Sev- 

 eral times the female appeared over a farm-house three miles from her hill, 

 flying rapidly in the other direction ; and I once saw her returning with 

 booty over the same route. This is in keeping with the habits of Falcons 

 as reported by other observers, who say that the birds do most of their 

 hunting at some distance from their aery, however plentiful the game in 

 its immediate vicinity. On Isola Rossa, a beautiful little bird -island ofif the 

 west coast of Sardinia (much resorted to, among other species, by the rare 

 Audouin's Gull), my father and I found Peregrines breeding practically in 

 the midst of a large colony of Rock Doves, though the one we shot was 

 crammed full of Black Starlings {Sturnus unicoior), from the mainland. 

 But I have wandered from my narrative. On the single occasion when we 

 found the male alone on guard, he acted very timid, and hurried away, after 

 a few feeble circlings and squealings. Perhaps he went to seek his wife. 

 She, whenever she returned during one of our visits, began screeching in 

 the distance, having apparently detected us from afar, and hardly ever 

 ceased to fly back and forth past us and her charges, screaming furiously, 

 as long as we were in the region. When I sat on the ledge beside the 

 babies, photographing them, her agitation became so extreme that she very 

 nearly attacked me outright. It was a most majestic and pathetic spectacle. 

 More than once I felt the breath of her powerful wings upon my face, and 

 often she approached within five yards before swerving aside. Her huge 

 yellow feet were sometimes menacingly extended, and sometimes retracted, 

 as she hurtled back and forth beside the clifif. Once, after we had been 

 some time with the youngsters, the mother returned with a quarry, which 

 she quickly deposited on a rock high up the hillside, to be unencumbered 

 for her attack on the intruders. I went and found the thing, — which 



