Page:The peregrine falcon at the eyrie (IA cu31924084757206).pdf/78

 58 week at home. There are other signs of wandering as they emulate one another's efforts in climbing on to the surrounding rocks; one of the young females has, in fact, disappeared from the eyrie. One young male seems very empty, and is whimpering every few minutes. He has climbed up on to B and is standing beside his big sister. She is warming herself in the rays of the declining sun; her full crop gives her quite a high-bosomed appearance, and her inclination is evidently towards a quiet dose. But the whimpers disturb her until at last every time he opens his beak she bends over and puts hers into it, as if feeding him, or else closes his beak with her mandibles. Presently he leaves her and gets down into the eyrie to look for something to eat. He attacks the stem of the giant mallow growing in the eyrie, and gets his talons so deeply into it that he has to fall down and flutter about before he can get free. At 7.15 p.m, the Tiercel arrived with a bird and devoted himself entirely to this hungry male at first. While this was going on I happened to knock over a tin in the shed. The Tiercel, at the sudden noise, stopped to listen with his beak open, which led to a misunderstanding. The youngster had been yapped at for not being prompt enough, so now he darted forward and, seizing his father's tongue, tried to pull it out. There now ensued a regular tug-of-war; the youngster planting his talons well into the ground and leaning back while his father shrieked in agony and, flapping his wings wildly, dragged the youngster, hanging on to his tongue, round and round. At last he shook himself free, and I expected to see an instance of personal chastisement, but the meal was resumed as if nothing had happened. The other two youngsters now joined in, the young female's appetite having revived through watching her brother eat. She not having anything offered to her tried twice to bite a piece out of her father's shoulder, as if to draw attention to her wants. The only unusual circumstances that happened next day were that, early in the morning, the Falcon brought a hen blackbird which she just dropped into the eyrie and then flew away. The female appropriated it to herself, but when she got down to the intestines she passed a coil through her beak as if tasting it, and then left the bird as if distasteful. Then a male seized it and, retiring to a corner, worked