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It was a little past noon on a late September day when we came over the crown of the moorland and saw the little loch lying in a hollow among the hills.

In an atmosphere blown diamond clear by a brisk wind from the north, the undulating and interminable carpet of the heather glowed golden in the sun beneath a sky of Andalusian azure. Across the ethereal depths of the zenith fleet after fleet of portly white clouds cruised full sail before the wind. Their shadows wove ever-changing patterns across the moorland and stained the time-worn granite of the distant hills a deep and burning blue-a blue which can be found nowhere else except in the backgrounds of some of Titian's pictures, within the fiery heart of a sapphire, or along the horizon of deep tropic seas.

A solitary raven hove in sight, lobbed low across the corner of the loch, chased his shadow up the farther slope, and alighted on a boulder near the crest. His hoarse and muted call, strangely penetrating, rang out from the far hillside, while the keeper cursed him and the local by-laws which protected him from harm. The Scot, and in particular the Highland Scot, is a law-abiding man. He will keep a law for

the same reason that Robert Louis Stevenson says he will keep a secret, "for the congenial exercise of keeping it." But while keeping it he growls. The sight of that ill-omened bird set all our keeper's pet grievances awork. He was clearly unaware-all keepers are

that a raven is nothing but a scavenger innocuous to living game. "An egg-sucking, sheepkilling, game-gorging marauder," he called him, or words to that effect. He had a grievance against the Royal Air Force also. There was a seaplane base near by, and joy riders over the moor, he told us, drove his beloved grouse half-crazy, setting them running all ways off the hills for miles. There is, I think, some truth in this. Worse still, a certain peregrine falcon-probably one on leisurely autumn passage southward daily haunted the moor, and by reason of that same law which protected the raven, did so with impunity. Here, at any rate, our keeper's grievance was based on surer ground. No doubt the peregrine falcon does kill game. None better. Before the days of shot-guns our ancestors found her their most prized auxiliary, the golden eagle himself in comparison being little but a clumsy and oversized rabbit - snatcher. In

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speaking of the Peregrine the feminine gender comes natural. "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." She is the breadwinner, and the very splendour of her performance should serve as mitigation for her crimes. The excuses made for her by modern 66 Preservationists " are altogether paltry and unworthy. Some of the less judicious or more ignorant among them have said that she actually benefits the stock of game by killing off the weakly birds. It is not true, furthermore it is an insult to her magnificent powers of flight. Her quarry is the first bird she sees, usually the first bird that rises, for on the wing alone the falcon deigns to take her prey, and that is never a sickly bird. Strong, indeed, and quick upon the wing must be the grouse or wild duck, golden plover or rock pigeon, stout fliers all, who can escape her terrible stoop. The preservation of the peregrine falcon within rational limits can be justified without recourse to prevarication; otherwise our claim (perhaps too often reiterated) that we are a nation of sportsmen becomes an idle and obsolete boast.

None the less I could sympathise with the keeper; our bag of grouse that morning had been small.

It was our immediate intention to try for a duck or two along the loch shore and afterwards have lunch. There was one duck in sight-a drake Tufted Duck swimming sedately

among the dancing peat-stained wavelets of the loch, well out of shot of either shore. He was safe, and knew it, although the bold contrast of his black-andwhite plumage made him the most conspicuous object in sight.

In the course of ages a tiny hill burn had accumulated a dense reed bed at the upper (western) end of the loch-a quaking bog of several acres, dangerous to man, a safe barbour for snipe, and on its waterside fringe a likely haunt for mallard or teal. A fishingboat moored on our side of the loch gave safe access to it. But because two full-sized guns do not shoot from one small boat if they are wise, it was arranged that I should skirt round the lower (eastern) end of the loch and lie up in a patch of high ragged heather on the farther shore. J. and the keeper would then row towards the reeds. Even if he failed to get a shot, any duck that he disturbed might, with luck, come within my reach. Teal in particular, when first flushed, have a trick of circling round the water before departure, wherein lay my best chance.

The loch itself (we had approached it from the souththat is to say, up wind) lay east and west along a shallow valley, the open water half a mile long by well over a gunshot broad. Of its name upon the map I can remember only an odd juxtaposition of letters, chiefly consonants, with a pro

nunciation beyond the compass of a Sassenach tongue.

From my ambush I watched J. and the keeper embark. Far off as they were, the guarded rattle of the mooring chain, the cautious shift of oar and baling tin, even a muttered objurgation to the dog came clear to me across the water, but, as it were, in miniature and strangely belated. The raven had long gone. Deliberate comedian that he is, with all the vanity of a "people's idol," he had early decided that upon his life alone I had designs, and departed forthwith to the distant hills jeering like a guttersnipe.

The tufted duck, who had also watched my manoeuvres with an alert wariness in his yellow eye, found the launching of the boat too much for his equanimity. Giving us all a wide berth, he rose upon the wing, steering due north into the wind.

Beyond the hill at my back, out of sight from where I crouched, he would have to cross a wide deep valley wherein a little trout stream formed our boundary. At the far side of this burn the ground rose in ever steeper and steeper slopes towards a wild jumble of hills and crags within the heart of which lay a mountain tarn. There, perchance, he might find greater peace.

I watched him go, the sun upon his wings. And as I watched a faint vague shadow flicked across the heather tops before my eyes. I looked up

Out

quickly towards the sun. from the sun-dazzle, high up in the sky, sharply outlined against bright fleecy clouds, moved a dark speck, sickle shaped. One glance was enough. Once seen no one can ever mistake a peregrine falcon on the wing. The wings rake backwards in a tense curve like a Barbary pirate's lanteen sails. The torpedo-shaped body, very broad forward, tails away rapidly in a streamline aft. It is this great breadth forward, where the great wing muscles are, which is a falcon's most noticeable characteristic. How many people realise that the breast of any bird they eat-twothirds of most birds' fleshis merely the engine of its flight?

But had the falcon seen the tufted duck's departure? For a moment or two I was in doubt. Deliberately, almost indolently, she swung up into the wind, hanging motionless on steady outstretched pinions. An instant later all my doubts were set at rest. With four or five rapid wing beats she gath ered full speed, dipped sharply downwards still in full flight, and then from that enormous altitude, a quarter of a mile or more, with wings closed, dropped

sheer.

Speed has ever exercised an almost inexplicable fascination on the human race; and in all wild nature, from the mere speed of it alone, there is no more supremely exalting spectacle, nothing more worth a journey to the ends of the earth

to see, than the breath-stopping wonder of a wild falcon's stoop. Delivered from such a height, its ultimate velocity is very nearly incalculable. Falling almost perpendicularly downwards from the height of a thousand feet-a quite normal pitch-a falcon's final speed by the force of gravity alone must attain something like two hundred and fifty feet a second, or nearly three miles a minute. To this must be added the initial velocity with which she starts, probably another mile a minute-two hundred and forty miles an hour. I can believe it.

The little pointed wings of a tufted duck, with their rapid and incessant beats, can carry his sturdy little body a great pace through the air. But rising as he was, and flying against a strongish breeze, his speed could hardly exceed sixty or seventy miles an hour, and that is a very generous estimate. For all the speed he appeared to make relative to the stooping falcon he might have been frozen to the sky.

It is hard to say at what exact moment the tufted duck realised his danger. I think it was almost as soon as the falcon first swung up into the wind. A duck on ordinary travel between one place and another will normally use only a half beat of the wing, just sufficient to keep a good 66 way on." The tufted duck was flying" all out," his wings going the full drive. There was little doubt he knew.

Not for nothing are the eyes of a duck set high up and well back in his head. He can see above and behind him almost as clearly as in front, a faculty which now stood him in good stead. He could not hope to outfly, he could only hope to dodge his terrible pursuer. And to do so with success demanded not only an agility of wing beyond the common and the utmost rapidity of action, but the most exact timing as well. A falcon's stoop, headlong and utterly reckless though it seems, is under complete controlthe control of a cool and prescient brain guided by the marvellous eyesight of a bird of prey. Should the tufted duck shift one moment too soon, the falcon could alter course upon the instant to counter it. Should he delay one fraction of a second too late, he would crash brokennecked and lifeless into the heather below, struck down by that living thunderbolt behind.

But the little tufted duck knew his job. He timed his shift to a nicety. On the very verge of the critical moment just the flicker of a wing, a slight sheer downwards and across, and the falcon flashed by within inches.

She flung herself up above her quarry again almost as fast as she came down; stooped again; and again missed by a bare inch. Twice and thrice again she strove to close with the still steadily retreating duck, and each time at the last moment he eluded her. They

were more or less on equal terms now. She had lost her She had lost her main advantage-the enormous impetus of her first downward rush. Almost it seemed as if the duck was having the best of it, when the chase vanished from sight behind the hill.

Though I had little doubt of the result, I would have given much to see the end. The duck's one chance of safety was on or under the waters of the mountain tarn far away and high up among the hills. Long before he could make it, the falcon would have grappled and borne him to the ground. Strong on the wing as a duck is, he would have little hope of ultimate escape in that long three-mile beat to windward.

which had made me bring a field-glass that morning. A great way off and very high up I caught sight of a dark speck. A tiny glint of white upon it told me it was the tufted duck. A still smaller speck, yet farther away and above it, was without doubt the falcon. Very rapidly they grew in size upon the object glass. Soon they were clearly recognisable. They were coming my way, fast and straight as an arrow from a bow.

The great height at which I first saw them made it easy to guess what had occurred. The falcon, weary of the futile scrimmage in the air, had mounted, swinging up in great spirals, to get above her quarry for a last decisive stoop. This had given the tufted duck a chance of escape, of which he had been quick to take advantage. He, too, had mounted

Half-heartedly I turned to the business in hand-almost too late. I had heard no shot from J. It was without warning, therefore, that a bunch of a duck can climb at a steep teal flying low along the water raced past my post. They were on me before I saw them, and my first barrel fired in fumbling haste was a clean miss. I retrieved complete disaster with the second barrel. One teal fell dead. Teal can fly, and the bird that fell, several yards behind the one I fired at, marked significantly the shortage of my forward allowance.

While waiting for the boat to pick up my teal from the water, I glanced back almost mechanically to the ridge top where the chase had disappeared. Hoping against hope, I searched all the sky above it. How I blessed the inspiration

slant with surprising speed,and then, when the falcon in one of her upward spirals had for a moment swung wide of him and ahead, he had turned tail suddenly, and now with the wind behind him, dropped in a long downward slant back to the little loch he had so rashly left a few crowded moments ago.

Fast as the tufted duck had travelled outward bound, his homecoming upon the wind was many times as fast. But the falcon's speed was faster yet. She had started from a higher pitch, her downward slant was steeper. She was not dropping now with wings near shut, but

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