32 BULLETIN 17 0, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Utah struck a quail from the flock with such force as to knock it to 

 the ground amid a cloud of feathers, but fortunately for the quail it 

 landed in the brush, where it escaped." H. S. Swarth (1924) records: 

 "Once observed in pursuit of domestic pigeons in Flagstaff, and sev- 

 eral times after poultry about ranch houses. The one specimen pre- 

 served was shot while making off with a chicken." Tyler (1923) 

 adds: "October 24, 1912, near Fresno I saw, at close range, a falcon 

 which was circling overhead suddenly fold his wings and swoop at a 

 small white chicken in a barnyard. The chicken escaped by quickly 

 diving under a clump of shrubbery." Finally, Ellsworth D. Lumley 

 writes us: "On the May 13, 1933, trip I came into possession of a 

 prairie falcon that a woman had killed the day before. It was in the 

 chicken yard with a chicken in its talons and when approached 

 allowed the woman to come close enough to knock it out with a 

 rock." But, on the other hand, Bendire (1892) bears contrary testi- 

 mony for the prairie falcon: "Poultry was rarely molested; and 

 although one of these Falcons would sometimes make a dash at some 

 of the fowls, it seemed to me that it was done more to scare and to 

 see them run than to capture them. Not a single instance came under 

 my observation where a chicken was actually struck by one of them. 

 I have no doubt whatever that they are fully capable of killing a full- 

 grown hen and of carrying her off, but they do not seem to care for 

 poultry, and I have more than once seen chickens feeding under a 

 tree in which one of these birds was sitting." In many ways I con- 

 sider Mr. Tyler's article (1913) particularly illuminating when he 

 writes: "A farmer living near New Hope once told me of a long- 

 winged 'bullet-hawk' that made regular visits to his place in quest of 

 young chickens, which it seized and bore away so rapidly that he 

 could never prevent the loss. Finally he resolved to wait for the 

 robber, as it always appeared about the same time each day, coming 

 from the foothills of the Coast Range mountains, fully twenty-five 

 miles away, and returning toward the same place. * * * At the 

 shot the bird dropped its victim [a squawking young fowl] but con- 

 tinued its flight, although apparently much weakened. It was never 

 seen again." There are scores of falcons in these same Coast Range 

 mountains. If chicken-killing is at all common, why did not Mr. 

 Tyler hear of, and record, other instances? That this was simply 

 one and the same individual that had developed a taste for chicken 

 seems shown by the fact that it never returned after being shot at once. 

 While all ornithologists are naturally more interested in falcon 

 attacks on birds than on mammals and are more likely to note such 

 instances, there are many notes of mammal destruction by prairie 

 falcons. Goss (1891) says that they kill "mice"; Bendire (1892) 

 and Henninger and Jones (1909) list "rodents"; Bryant (1918) adds 

 "pocket gopher"; Coues (1874), Goss (1891), Fisher (1907), Tyler 



