Page:The peregrine falcon at the eyrie (IA cu31924084757206).pdf/24

 4 some knife-edged rocks alongside on the edge of the precipice might be bridged with planks and so make a horizontal platform for the tent. This being done, I next spent great part of a sunny day watching the flies buzzing about an empty eyrie, the young being asleep behind the rocks. I came to the conclusion that probably most of the feeding was done early in the morning and late in the day, and that if I wanted to see anything I must sleep in the tent. My friends demurred on account of the risk of the tent being blown bodily away with me, should a gale spring up in the night. But after our boatman had lashed it to his heart's content, with a few additional pounds of new rope, to the adjacent rocks, I was allowed to have my own way and found, as I expected, that at sunset life in the eyrie began, and was carried on next day as if no one were present. But after two more watches I found, on developing my negatives, that the game was not worth the candle, as I only got the birds the size of a bluebottle. So at our next visit we came provided with trestles four feet high, and with some trepidation we erected the tent face to face with the eyrie. I intended leaving it unoccupied for two days, but bad weather lengthened this to a week. By this time the young were ready to leave the eyrie, and I had the disappointment of seeing nothing, but of hearing the old birds lure the young away to be fed somewhere out of sight.

The year 1911 opened with good prospects. By the middle of April there were four eggs in the eyrie, and a new eyrie had been found on an adjacent island, also with four eggs in it, which we proposed to devote to the kinematograph. But the egg-collector had picked up our trail and we had, unfortunately, omitted to pencil the eggs; so when it was too late we found out that by bribing a boatman, he had cleared out the new eyrie and had taken half the eggs out of the old one. Why he left two can only be surmised; but possibly the boatman dreaded what might happen if we arrived and found ourselves without occupation, and the collector probably sold his six eggs as two complete clutches. It may be gathered that there is not much love lost between bird-photographers and egg-collectors. On the principle of what is fair in love and war, collectors pass themselves off as photographers