The kestrel is considered by some naturalists to be the most scientific hoverer of our British hawks. Certainly he uses with great skill the winds of heaven for his livelihood. He leans upon the moving air, sometimes slipping sideways and losing height, but reassuming poise by quick beats of his chestnut pinions. Our largest hawk, the buzzard, is common in this district by the sea, and with large wings outspread he sails circlewise till his prey is detected, when a slow descent is made to the ground. Often these birds have been observed to hang low over the heather and gorse, motionless, wings arched and bent backwards, for nearly a minute at a time. But the peregrines, so swift and ruthless in flight and habit, out-hover both the kestrel and the buzzard. The hovering of the kestrel is weak, delicately balanced; that of the buzzard clumsily weighty, and only managed in a strong air-current; the peregrine falcon cuts into the gusts, controlling his flight with instant power, unheeding the wind’s vagaries. He can remain still, soar higher, or drift sideways with ease. The eyrie is a hundred feet down the cliff-face, upon a narrow ledge. For years their young have been taken by the Tiger, a small, wiry man who, descends by a rope attached to a driven crowbar, swings inwards to the ledge, and is hauled to the top with the young falcons in a basket. Yet every year when the celandines come the falcons’ courtship begins, ending only when the scent of the wild thyme fades and the sea-thrift rusts with autumn’s decay. They hunt together, ranging afar. Their stoop is terrible to behold, so swift and shattering its ending. It may be at a rabbit which ventures forth from the holes of the swarded slopes, at a stock-dove beating speedy flight from Lundy Island, or at an immigrant swallow flying from alien wastes to the shore and sanctuary. Nothing is immune from ravage save the larger gulls and the sombre ravens, who croak defiance from their aerial soughing. The peregrines raid from their base upon the headland to the inland villages, watching for the chance of taking a tame dove from a cot; onwards to the lonely wastes of the sandhills, crowned with spike-grass, where the peewits wail throughout the springtime. They dash up the wide estuary; the ring-plover crouch low among the stones and seaweed as they pass; they even visit Barnstaple itself for the blue-gray pigeons that wheel above its old shipyards. In the skyey loftiness one moment are the hawks, watching and soaring, the male usually the higher; one will close pinions and dive like a dark arrowhead through the air, flattening as a bird is reached; there is a burst of feathers, a triumphant chattering, and the limp victim is borne to the solitudes of the dunes. A week later upon the sand a bleached skeleton will lie, surrounded by a scattered ring of feathers, in company with old bones of rabbits and bead-like shells that tell of ended generations.