Page:The peregrine falcon at the eyrie (IA cu31924084757206).pdf/32

 12 between them after this, and the young began to whimper, apparently from cold. Finally, at 7.30 p.m., I was disappointed when the Tiercel came and brooded them for the night.

Next morning I heard the Tiercel call soon after 3 a.m., and raising my head from the pillows, saw him looking skywards as he sat brooding the young. About 4 a.m, he was calling again. This time he flew off, but returned in a few minutes to brood. The same occurred at 5 a.m., and hearing the young whimpering after his return, I looked out and found he was feeding them off a thrush. The second meal started at 5.50 a.m, and lasted till 6.5; apparently the quarry was a blackbird. In the course of this meal they swallowed practically all the feathers except the flight and tail feathers. He gave one female the ramp, and when he found her in difficulties, he took it back and pulled the tail-feathers out for her. When he got to the intestines he snipped off pieces three or four inches long, and occasionally there was a tug-of-war if the piece was not swallowed in time to prevent another youngster seizing the free end. When, towards the end of the meal, the young became inattentive, he did a good deal of yapping, as usual. During this meal, at 6 a.m., one of the young females had a leg given to her, and during the rest of the meal she made convulsive gulps in her efforts to swallow it, but the claws and about an inch of the leg remained outside. The Tiercel again swallowed the remnants, including the other leg, and then covered the young, without paying any attention to the young female with the protruding claw. He dozed at intervals, and in closing his eyes I noticed that the lower lid, yellow in colour, rose slowly and covered the eye. He never dozed for more than a few seconds at a time, even when not disturbed by the youngsters moving under him. This often happened, the chief offender being the female with the claws. She on several occasions wriggled her head out from under his breast. The last time I saw her do this was at 6.35 a.m., when the claws were still protruding. At 7 a.m. I tested the light at the back door, and, finding it sufficiently good, took a series of him with the studio shutter. Whenever he dozed for more than fifteen seconds, his head began to droop on his chest. Several times he sat there with his seaward-eye open and his landward-eye closed;