Page:The peregrine falcon at the eyrie (IA cu31924084757206).pdf/30

 10 On one occasion on her return she alighted on rock C, which was only five feet from the camera. On another occasion she presented a fine sight. Pitching on the top of the rock behind the eyrie, she clambered down its almost vertical face with both wings extended. She was, however, very nervous, and on one occasion departed, owing to a single slight cough on my part. About fifteen minutes after her final departure the Tiercel arrived with a mangled thrush. The young immediately came to life and squatted in a ring as he held the quarry under his talons and tore bits of it out with his beak; they whimpered, and each convulsively raised its open beak in the hope of being chosen for the red morsel he held lightly in the tip of his beak. Generally the pieces, which he evenly distributed, were small; but I was surprised to see what enormous mouthfuls of flesh and feathers they at times managed, with a little struggling, to swallow. He occasionally looked in my direction while I rapidly exposed three plates on the scene, and did not seem at all scared by the unavoidable noises I made. However, he must have been so, as he left after the third exposure. Nevertheless, he returned in a few minutes and continued the meal, while I made five more exposures. He gave several startling "yapps" towards the end of the meal, which I knew of old meant that the young were getting slow in taking their bits; one young female struggled some time with a leg she tried to swallow. She tried hard, but the claws remained an inch outside her beak. The Tiercel rapidly swallowed the remnants and proceeded to brood the young. As he sat quite still I put the focal-plane shutter out of action, and, taking the back of the camera out, fixed the silent studio shutter behind the lens and took two of him with it. The tube leaked; but I had previously found out that a full squeeze of the ball gave with the leak exactly a half-second exposure. Although he frequently turned his head, each movement was generally followed by a second or more, during which he was quite still, so I fired directly after he had moved his head. These extremely rapid head-movements of the Peregrine do not look so; but I had previously found to my cost that if they coincide with the exposure, not even 1-100sec, will save the image from distortion. My subsequent experience made me sorry that I had not used this