74 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
necessary too for the health of these birds that natural 
food of this sort should be given. When you see—as you 
sometimes do see—a collection in which the birds of 
prey are fed on plain horse-flesh or liver, you may feel 
sure that they will not remain long in good health. 
Examine these pellets every day to see whether all 
meat has been properly digested, and you have at 
once a simple key to the success of the vegzmen and the 
bird’s condition. But this is a digression. 
Now, some raptorial birds never let these pellets be 
seen near the nest, but others are not so particular. Our 
screech or barn owl leaves its mouse-bone and mouse- 
fur pellets all about its nest, but our brown or tawny owl 
either moves them away or is careful to eject them at a 
distance. At any rate I have never seen any castings at 
a tawny’s nest. 
On the other hand, you will find reliable accounts of 
peregrine’s breeding places in which not only pellets 
were seen but much old food, so that Yarrell says: ‘ The 
presence of birds’ bones in or around the nest seems to 
be the rule, and upon the top of the cliffs near St. Abb’s 
Head, where Selby visited a nest, he noticed, scattered 
in great profusion, the castings of the falcons.’? But it 
is quite obvious that, in such an instance as this, the 
young birds were hatched; the food was for them, and 
the castings were theirs. 
Just opposite the Russian cross the river, widening 
1 British Birds, 4th ed., i. 59. 
