THE PEREGRINE FALCON. 151 



the flocks of Pigeons and even Blackbirds, causing great 

 terror in their ranks, and forcing them to perform various 

 aerial evolutions to escape the grasp of his dreaded talons. 

 For several days I watched one of them that had taken a 

 particular fancy to some tame Pigeons, to secure which it 

 went so far as to enter their house at one of the holes, seize 

 a bird, and issue by another hole in an instant, causing such 

 terror among the rest as to render me fearful that they 

 would abandon the place. However, I fortunately shot the 

 depredator. 



" They occasionally feed on dead fish that have floated to 

 the shores or sand-bars. I saw several of them thus occupied 

 while descending the Mississippi on a journey undertaken 

 expressly for the purpose of observing and procuring 

 different specimens of birds, and which lasted four months, 

 as I followed the windings of that great river, floating down 

 it only a few miles daily. During that period, I and my com- 

 panion counted upwards of fifty of these Hawks. * * * 



" It is a clean bird in respect to feeding. No sooner is 

 the prey dead than the Falcon turns its belly upwards and 

 begins to pluck it with his bill, which he does very expertly, 

 holding it meantime quite fast in his talons; and as soon as 

 a portion is cleared of feathers, tears the flesh in large 

 pieces, and swallows it with great avidity. If it is a large 

 bird, he leaves the refuse parts, but, if small, swallows the 

 whole in pieces. Should he be approached by an enemy, 

 he rises with it and flies off into the interior of the woods, 

 or, if he happens to be in a meadow, to some considerable 

 distance, he being more wary at such times than when he 

 has alighted on a tree. 



" These birds sometimes roost in the hollows of trees. I 

 saw one resorting for weeks every night to a hole in a dead 

 sycamore, near Louisville, in Kentucky. It generally came 



