: yv o cf.;
GYR -F ALC ON.
Falco gyrfalco, Linn.
GYE-FALCON.
FALCO GYRFALCO, Linn.
Falco gyrfalco, Linn. S. N. i. p. 130 (1766) ; Naum. xiii.
p. 22; Yarr. ed. 4, i. pp. 36, 46; Dresser, vi. p. 15.
Gerfaut de Norvège, French ; Gierfalke, German ; Gerifàlte,
Spanish.
I can only discover two records of the occurrence of
this Scandinavian Falcon in our country, viz. one
killed in Sussex in 1845, now in the collection of
Mr. W. Borrer, who tells us in his ‘ Birds of Sussex’
(1891) that his specimen, which he at first considered
as an Iceland Falcon, was identified as an adult of the
present species by the late Mr. John Henry Gurney.
Mr. Borrer, in' the work to which I have just referred,
gives an excellent figure of this Falcon, which proves,
were any proof needed, the correctness of Mr, Gurney’s
identification. The other occurrence to which I have
alluded is recorded by Mr. H. Seebohm, c British Birds,’
vol. i. p. 19 (1883), who states that an immature
example of the “ Norwegian form of Jer-Falcon ” was
shot at Orford, in Suffolk, in the act of devouring a
hen, on October 14th, 1867, and was, at the time of
Mr. Seebohm’s writing, in the possession of Mr. Ed.
Hunt, of Pimlico, the brother of its destroyer.
I will not go into the much disputed question of
specific distinction between the Gyr and Iceland Falcons
further than by saying that although the immature