young. Many of the species eat fish, am 

 principally on the smaller birds, snakes, 



FALCON. 



451 



, and others feed 

 and reptiles. 



They never associate in flocks ; and, except during the 

 breeding season, even two of them are seldom seen 

 together. Their nests or eyries are generally built in 

 very lofty and inaccessible places, ; but there are a few 

 that form them on the ground. Many of these re- 

 marks apply to the hawks with short and broad wings, 

 as well as to the falcons properly so called; and 

 indeed the habits of the one race run so much into 

 the other on the confines, that it is not easy to draw 

 the line of distinction between them. This is more 

 especially the case in some of the foreign falcons, 

 which are much less noble birds than those of the 

 north ; and some, which have many of the external 

 characters, not only feed upon carrion, but occasion- 

 ally upon Crustacea, which is not the case with the 

 more typical ones of Europe. 



The peculiar characters of the true falcon are the 

 beak curved from its base, with a tooth, and sometimes 

 two, on each side of the upper mandible near its 

 point, and corresponding notches in the lower one. The 

 point of the upper one is very sharp and much hooked, 

 and that of the lower is rather sloping and convex, but 

 acting with a powerful grinding motion against the 

 concavity of the hook. The degree of toothing in 

 the mandibles does not bear any relation to the abso- 

 lute power of the falcons ; because the beak in them 

 is an instrument for dressing their prey rather than 

 for killing it ; and therefore the smaller species, which 

 prey upon little birds, and have many feathers to 

 pull in order to obtain a small quantity of food, have 

 the mandibles most complete in this respect, while 

 some of the most powerful of the whole have the tooth 

 comparatively blunt. In the wings of the true falcons 

 the second quill is always the longest, though the 

 first is ver}' little inferior to it in length. These two 

 have their shafts and webs remarkably firm ; and the 

 others, as far as the tenth, shortened gradually, so as 

 to form a pointed wing. 



Those pointed wings are not so good for straight- 

 forward flight in perfectly still air, as wings which are 

 broader ; and therefore, when there is no wind, and 

 the falcon is on level flight, it always flies obliquely 

 or curving ; the same may be also observed in the 

 swallow tribe, and indeed in all birds which have the 

 wings much pointed. But this forrn of the wings 

 constitutes, or at least constituted, one of the chief 

 excellencies of the falcons as sporting birds. Such 

 wings are of course not good for mounting the air, 

 unless they have some resistance with which to con- 

 tend ; and therefore falcons " get the sky better " 

 directly against the wind than in any other direction ; 

 and, as it is the reverse with birds at which falcons 

 chiefly were flown, this gives the falcon great advan- 

 tage in capturing those which are of powerful wing 

 and doubling flight. 



When a hawk or other bird of prey endeavours to 

 gain the sky by flying with the wind, it is said to 

 turn " down the wind;" and this was reckoned a 

 very great imperfection, because the bird got on so 

 slowly in this way, that the prey had time to escape 

 before it could turn and take advantage of its " rush " 

 from the upper air. The true falcon never turns 

 down the wind in this way ; and thus, when it is un- 

 able to come up with the prey in simple chase, and 

 turns off to gain a sky power, it always turns to wind- 

 ward, and its ascent, if seen sideways, is much more 

 nearly in a perpendicular direction than one would 



expect. Indeed, any one who reflects on the matter 

 will readily understand how the wind and the falcon, 

 by being two forces acting at an angle to each other, 

 must produce a resulting motion of the falcon, in the 

 diagonal direction, and upon the well known principle 

 of the composition of forces, and the resulting force 

 in mechanics, send the bird much more rapidly, and 

 much more directly upwards, than if it had to work 

 its way wholly by the action of the wings. The 

 falcon thus gains her elevation with comparatively 

 little labour, and arrives at the same altitude with 

 much less horizontal distance than if she had a side 

 wind, and especially if she went down the wind, which 

 would then carry her horizontally away from the prey, 

 and render it exceedingly difficult for her to gain 

 such a height, as that she would return upon it with 

 any impetus, or indeed with any chance of seizing it. 

 This is a very beautiful instance of mechanical action, 

 and structured adaptation of the falcon to the wind ; 

 and we shall not admire it the less when we come to 

 consider that the more powerful falcons chiefly inhabit 

 those placqs of the earth and those descriptions of 

 surface where the winds are never long at rest. The 

 falcon is a mountaineer, not exactly a cliff bird like 

 thp. golden eagle, but a careerer of moor and dell, 

 where the differences of these are considerable, and 

 where, what with one diversity of surface and what 

 with another, there is generally a wind from some 

 point to act as a lever in heaving up the falcon to her 

 height in the sky, and that with the least possible 

 horizontal deviation from that prey upon which she 

 is j;o rush, after she turns. In this part of her action 

 she bears some resemblance to the eagles, though in 

 general she strikes in the air, and not on the earth us 

 the eagle does. After she turns, she remains poised 

 for a few moments, her wings acting the while with 

 great rapidity ; and there is little doubt that this 

 action of the wjrigs tends to excite all the energies of 

 the bird to their very utmost, as well as to enable her 

 to take her aim with unerring certainty. The moment 

 that she has by this means gained her excitement and 

 her poise, the rush with which she descends resembles 

 that of the lightning, and, when seen laterally, it abso- 

 lutely dazzles the eye. In such a case, if the breeze 

 is moderately fresh, and the falcon powerful, the cap- 

 ture of her prey is certain, be it almost what bird it 

 may; for she now descends, in her oblique but arrowy 

 path, by the cornbined energy of three forces her 

 own excited action, her gravitation, and the force of 

 the wind. The prey seems to be well aware of this, 

 for, though it may be a lapwing, or a pigeon, or any 

 other bird which is " clever at its feathers," and which 

 has thrown her out at simple chase till she has aban- 

 doned that style of pursuit, it screams and appears 

 powerless and vanquished, even while the falcon is 

 yet so high as to appear no bigger than a lark ; and 

 after the scream one can hardly count moments till 

 the prey is struck to the ground. In the whole ac- 

 tion of animals of wild nature in the finding of their 

 food, there is perhaps none equal in point of style 

 and beauty of mechanical contrivance, and adaptation 

 to this contrivance, as this rush of the falcon upon the 

 wide moor, where prey and preyer are equally in their 

 element in free nature, and in the full possession and 

 practice of all their resources. We shall perhaps 

 have to revert to it in the course of this article. 



Among falcons, properly so called, Cuvier makes a 

 distinction which is probably well founded ; and that 

 is, the distinction between falcons and jerfalcons. 

 F F2 



