Eastward of Brighton, about fourteen miles, is Beachy Head, the home, from time immemorial, of a pair of Peregrine Falcons—_Falco peregrinus_; another pair is generally to be found in the high cliffs near Seaford. This noble bird was the pride of our ancestors in their sporting diversions, and was considered very valuable when possessed of the particular qualities most in request. Yarrell, in his “History of British Birds,” mentions that in the reign of James I. Sir Thomas Monson is said to have given one thousand pounds for a cast (a couple) of these hawks. The high perpendicular cliffs at Beachy Head have always been a favourite breeding place for the Peregrines, and where their young are generally every year taken by a man whose companions let him over the cliff by means of a derrick. The derrick is simply a pole with a sheave-wheel at one end of it, for the rope to pass over, and is run about two feet over the edge of the cliff, and at the other end it has a hole, through which an iron bar is passed and driven firmly into the ground to keep it steady. By this contrivance the man is lowered to the required spot, and hauled up again in safety, and though the process has been going on for many years, no instance is recorded of any accident having occurred. By this means also a great many of the eggs of the Willock—_Uria troili_—and Razor bill—_Alca torda_,—are taken; these birds breed here in great numbers every year. The derrick is a familiar machine to the smuggler, as it enables him to get his tubs very expeditiously from the bottom to the top of the cliff, which is done by several men on the beach taking hold of the end of the rope, and running straight out with it, and then fastening on the tubs in clusters. Sometimes they are brought up in this way four or five hundred feet. These cliffs are likewise the resort and breeding places of a great many Jackdaws—_Corvus monedula_. Sixty years ago the Red Legged Crow, or Cornish Chough—_Pyrrhocorax graculus_—was common here, though now the species is nearly or quite extinct all along our southern shores. A man, now between sixty and seventy years of age, who has been in the constant habit of going nearly all his life, to Beachy Head to catch prawns for a livelihood, says that he remembers the Red-billed Daw perfectly well, and that the last he saw there, was fifty-three or fifty-four years ago, and that he recollects to this day the precise spot where he saw them. There were seven in company, and he describes their flight to be a succession of jerks, or in the manner of a Dishwasher, which is very peculiar. It was ninety years ago that Gilbert White, of Selborne, recorded the fact of their abounding at Beachy Head and all along the cliffs of the Sussex Coast.