24 
FALCONID^S. 
RAPTURES. 
L A WON! DTE 
PEREGRINE FALCON. 
Falco peregrinus. 
PLATE VIII. 
The Peregrine Falcon is much too large a bird to 
escape for any length of time the prying eyes of the game- 
keeper. It is, therefore, confined to those wild districts 
which he rarely visits, and most of its breeding-places in 
this country are in the highest and least accessible cliffs 
of our sea-coast, to which it will return for many years 
together. 
The Rev. W. D. Fox informs me that a pair of these 
birds have frequented the rocks of the Isle of Wight, and 
although annually plundered of their eggs or young ones, 
have for many successive years returned to the same spot; 
and what is more remarkable, although one of the sexes 
has been sometimes shot, the remaining bird has never 
failed to bring a mate with it the following spring. 
The eggs which I have figured before were sent me by 
the Rev. James Smith of Monquhitter, and were procured 
by him from the fine rocks which bound the Murray Firth. 
Macgillivray says that the Peregrine breeds on the Bass 
Rock, the cliffs near Tantallon Castle, May Island, and St. 
Abb’s Head, Holyhead and Great Ormes Head are men¬ 
tioned by Mr. Yarrell, and very many other places of its 
resort might be enumerated along most of the precipitous 
coast of Great Britain and Ireland. Mr. Wolley tells me 
that it not uufrequently breeds in church-steeples in the 
