THE PEREGRINE FALCON. 
3-3 
“ You will see further particulars on this subject in the paper pub- 
lished in the Annals of Nat. History, No. 10, Dec., 1838.” 
THE PEREGRINE EALCON. 
Falco jperegrinus, Briss. 
Inhabits suitable localities throughout the island, breed- 
ing in marine and inland cliffs. 
Eyries and Distribution . — In the cliffs of the four maritime 
counties of Ulster, it has many eyries, and in Antrim, where the 
basaltic precipices are peculiarly favourable for this purpose, nine 
at least may be enumerated. Three of these, — Glenariff, Salagh 
Braes, and the Cave-hill,* — are inland. A nest was pointed out 
in 1831 to Dr. J. D. Marshall, in a range of basaltic cliffs on the 
north side of the island of Rathlin, to which a man descended, 
and brought up two young birds. In connection with two of the 
grandest features of this coast, Eairhead and Dunluce Castle, the 
peregrine falcon has especially attracted my attention. The eyrie 
at the latter, however, is not on the same headland with the Castle, 
but at a more lofty one on its eastern-side. 
A range of precipitous basaltic cliff, called the Gobbins, rising 
from the sea outside the northern entrance to Belfast bay, has 
been regularly frequented to the present time (1847) by a 
pair, and in one year, there were two nests within an extent 
of rock considerably less than a mile, which is the only in- 
stance known to me of so close an approximation of their 
eyries. Even at “ the Horn ” in Donegal, where the extent of 
lofty precipices is very great and continuous, we met with but a 
pair of these birds during a week spent there, when we endeavour- 
& 
* A pair bred in M ‘Art’s Fort on this hill, in 1822, and the young were taken by 
a person lowered over the precipice with a rope around his body. This locality, about 
three miles from Belfast, is no^r too much frequented to be occupied by the peregrine 
falcon. In the spring of 1832, a pair remained there for some time, but did not 
venture to build. M'Skimmin, in his History of Carriclcfergus, mentions its building 
in another inland locality, at the rocks of the Knockagh Hill, near that town. 
VOL. I. 
D 
