64 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



the female bird towards the male, as she skimmed over him, 

 was on the expectation of his having brought in booty, which 

 was either not the case, or else he withheld it from her, probably 

 the latter, for in another two or three minutes only the cry of the 

 male is again heard, the female again flies off, and returns, now, 

 almost directly, with something with which she feeds the young. 

 At 12.55 the male cries and the female goes off. She returns 

 with prey, in a few minutes, feeds the chicks, and, at about 1.5, 

 flies out again. She is soon off, but soon back again, and is now 

 away till 1.38 — this and once before, during the incubatory 

 period, when she left it for twenty- eight minutes, make her two 

 longest absences from the nest. During a part of this time the 

 male is in my sight, standing first on one promontory of the 

 walls of the ravine, and then another. I watch him for some 

 time, wishing to make sure of his identity, and whilst I am doing 

 so he rises, and, following him with the glasses, I see him 

 descend upon the female, who is standing on a similar promi- 

 nence, a little way on, and coition is effected. 



At 1.53 the female again flies off the nest, in response to the 

 cry of the male. I watch her down over the brow of a rise, in 

 good view, but which just hides her. In just a minute, however, 

 she returns with a bird, and feeds the chicks, a long white entrail 

 playing a prominent part in the meal. The mother gives them 

 small bits of it, for the most part, and twice when they have a 

 larger piece, she removes it, again, from their bills, and swallows 

 it herself. This is not done greedily, but carefully. The chicks 

 also feed decorously as they have hitherto. Neither now or 

 upon any former occasion has there been anything that can 

 be called plucking or pluming of the bird brought in, upon 

 the nest ; a feather or two may have been removed, but 

 nothing more important. Evidently the nest is not thought 

 the right place for this preliminary. As for the species of bird 

 forming the prey, both now and generally, I can only go by 

 probabilities and suppose it to be the Meadow-Pipit, which is 

 very common over the land here, but in this I may be mistaken, 

 the more or less plucked and always (I think) decapitated state 

 of the victim making it difficult to judge. Its size has generally 

 seemed to me to favour this supposition, but, where only por- 

 tions have been brought in, these may have been of a larger 



