Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/57



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 1834 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, Fairhead 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 now 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 Carrickfergus, mentions its building in another inland locality, at the rocks of the Knockagh Hill, near that town. VOL. I.