FALCON 



F 



FALCON (Latin, Falco ; ^ French, Fcmcon ; Teutonic, Folk or 

 Valken), a word now restricted to the high-couraged and long- winged 

 Birds-of-Prey which take their quarry as it moves ; but formerly it 

 had a very different meaning, being by the naturalists of the last 

 and even of the j^resent century extended to a great number of 

 birds comprised in the genus Falco of Linnaeus and writers of his 

 day,"-^ while, on the other hand, by falconers, it was, and still is, 

 technically limited to the female of the birds employed by them in 

 their vocation, whether " long-mnged " and therefore "noble," or 

 " short- winged " and "ignoble." 



According to modern usage, the majority of the Falcons, in the 

 sense first given, may be separated into Jive very distinct groups : 

 - — (1) the Falcons pure and simple {Falco proper) ; (2) the large 

 northern Falcons (Hierofalco, Cuvier) ; (3) the "Desert Falcons" 

 [Gennsea, Kaup) ; (4) the Merlins {j^salon, Kaup) ; and (5) the 

 Hobbies {HypotriorcMs, Boie). The precise order in which these 

 should be I'anked need not concern us here, but it must be mentioned 

 that a sixth group, the Kestrels {Tinnunculus, Vieillot), is often 

 added to them. This, however, appears to be justifiably reckoned 

 a distinct genus, and its consideration may for the present be de- 

 ferred. 



The typical Falcon is by common consent allowed to be that 

 cosmopolitan species to which unfortunately the English epithet 

 " peregrine " {i.e. strange or wandering) has been attached. It is the 

 Falco peregrinus of Tunstall (1771) and of most recent ornithologists, 

 though some ^ prefer the specific name communis applied by J. F. 

 Gmelin a few years later (1788) to a bird which, if his diagnosis 

 be correct, could not have been a true Falcon at all, since it had 

 yellow ix'ides — a colour never met with in the eyes of any bird now 



^ The earliest use of this word, which is unknown to classical writers, is mT ( gih^aju 

 said to be by Servius Honoratus (circa 390-480 a.d. ) in his notes on ^n. J J 



lib. X. vers. 145. It seems possibly to be the Latinized form of the Teutonic 

 Folk, though /afe is commonly accounted its root. 



- The nomenclature of nearly all the older writers on this point is extremely 

 confused, and the attempt to unravel it would hardly repay the trouble, and 

 would undoubtedly occupy more space than could here be allowed. What many 

 of them, even so lately as Pennant's time, termed the "Gentle Falcon" is cer- 

 tainly the bird we now call the Gos-Hawk {i.e. Goose-Hawk), which name itself 

 may have been transferred to the Astur 2}cclumbarius of modern ornithologists, 

 from one of the long- winged Birds-of-Prey. 



•' Among them Dr. Sharpe, who, in the first volume of the Catalogue of the 

 Birds in the British Museum; has besides rejected much of the evidence that the 

 experience of those who have devoted years of study to the Falcons has supplied. 



