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THE PEREGRINE FALCON IN THE SOUTHERN 



MIDLANDS. 



By 0. V. Aplin, F.L.S. 



I HAVE just examined a very fine and unusually dark coloured 

 Peregrine in the plumage of the first year, which was shot at or 

 near Buckingham on Nov. 7th, 1910. I saw the body after it 

 was skinned, and found it very well nourished, and the bird was 

 probably following the Wood-Pigeons, which are abundant just 

 now. The Peregrine is a regular visitor to the southern mid- 

 lands. Those that occur in autumn — at least, those that get 

 shot and I examine — are almost invariably young birds of the 

 year, the " passage hawks" of falconers. On the other hand, 

 when I hear of a falcon having been killed in mid-winter or in 

 early spring (e.g. March), and I get a chance of seeing it, I 

 almost always find (writing from memory at this minute, I 

 should say I always have found) that it was an adult bird. The 

 last I heard of was at Christmas, 1909 — an old blue female shot 

 at Cbacombe, just over our boundary, in Northamptonshire. The 

 young birds do not seem to stay long in autumn, and why they 

 do not re-pass here in spring (if they do not) I do not know. 

 Both young and old, when they are with us, usually either 

 haunt woods where there are many Wood-Pigeons, or large 

 sheets of water where there are wildfowl. Byfield Reservoir is 

 visited, and I have heard of two passage hawks killed in one 

 autumn at Boarstall Duck Decoy, where they are a great 

 nuisance, and would soon ruin the decoy for the season if they 

 were allowed to remain. Peregrines also sometimes frequent 

 the river valleys if they are partly flooded, and there are any 

 wildfowl and Peewits about. I am told also that they take up 

 their quarters on the arable land on the lower slopes of the 

 Chiltern Hills (retiring no doubt to roost in the woods that cap 

 the hills in places), and there levy a toll on the Partridges. 

 They frequent big open fields, and when on the watch, or when 



