EASTERN PIGEON HAWK 77 



had gone; the other moved, as the hawk apparently intended, and a 

 sudden swoop from the hedge, a screamed cry from the whitethroat, 

 and the hawk had its prey. This seemed a daring way of frightening 

 intended prey to take wing." 



Behavior. — The flight of the pigeon hawk is swift and dashing, like 

 that of the larger falcons. Its trim body is propelled at tremendous 

 speed by the rapid motion of its long, pointed wings. Few, if any, 

 birds can escape it in straightaway flight; even the black swift, one 

 of our fastest-flying birds, has been captured by it. But the prowess 

 of this and other falcons has been somewhat overestimated by admir- 

 ing observers; it is not always successful, and it often fails to capture 

 birds of much slower flight that are skillful at dodging. William 

 Brewster (1925) tells of a pigeon hawk's attempt to capture a titlark: 



Titlarks were particularly abundant. As I was watching not less than one 

 hundred of them circling over the marshes, a Pigeon Hawk dashed repeatedly 

 into the midst of the crowded flock without capturing any of its members, al- 

 though one was finally separated from the rest, and pursued for upwards of five 

 hundred yards. The Hawk rose above and stooped down at it fully twenty times 

 in quick succession, with lightning speed and faultless grace. More than once 

 I thought it had it in its talons, but it always eluded them at the critical moment 

 by an abrupt turn or twist. This he could not seem to follow, but invariably 

 descended straight for several yards farther before checking his impetus, to 

 mount and swoop again. All the while the Titlark was nearing, if by devious 

 courses, a dense thicket of alders into which it plunged at length, to be seen no 

 more. 



He also witnessed the repeated attempts of a pigeon hawk to cap- 

 ture one of a small flock of blue jays; in spite of his swift and spectac- 

 ular dashes, the falcon always failed, as the jay always succeeded in 

 dodging or dropping into a treetop, where the falcon did not attempt 

 to attack it; a sharp-shinned hawk would have dashed in after it. 



Tavemer and Swales (1907) relate the following incident, witnessed 

 by W. E. Saunders: "We had fired at and wounded a Black-bellied 

 Plover which was flying over Lake Erie. The wounded bird was 

 at once pursued by this falcon. Attaining a height of thirty or forty 

 feet above the plover, who was only five or six feet above the water, 

 the falcon swooped and missed — the plover dodging. Again he rose 

 and swooped, and again missed. This was repeated perhaps six 

 times, the birds drawing away northeast towards the mainland, when 

 finally the falcon was successful and struck the plover, knocking him 

 into the water. He then rose, and with a careful swoop, picked him 

 up and flapped away to the Point and we saw him no more." 



Referring to the flight of this falcon, Ernest Thompson Seton (1890) 

 says: "One trick of flight they had in common with the Whisky John, 

 Shrike and others, namely, flying low over the ground towards a 

 post or stump, and just as one expects to see them strike the bottom 

 of it there is a sudden spreading of tail and wing, and the bird grace- 



