174 JOURNAL, BOMB Al^ NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol.XlV. 



No. XXIV.— "BIRDS OF PREY." 



' Gndei" the above heading, Major Rodon asks the question, as to what 

 becomes of the bones of birds, after they have been struck by hawks and 

 whether a hawk eats his prey, where he struck it, or carries it away elsewhere. 

 Vol. XIII., page 185. To begin with the second question. It depends 

 entirely on the locality, in which the hawk has struck, as to whether 

 it will attempt to eat its quarry where it has caught it. If the place is well 

 wooded, or otherwise offers good cover, for the hawk to sit and enjoy its meal 

 in peace, it will pluck and devour it there and then, but very few will attempt 

 it in Lhe open, where the keen eyes of their bigger cousins, are liable to see. 

 A peregrine may, sometimes, be seen on an open plain, or on the bed of a 

 river, eating its prey, but in that case, it has probably caught a duck and 

 more than it can conveniently carry, or it finds, that, by flying across an open 

 plain with a bird in its talons, it is much more liable to be seen, by one of the 

 large sea-eagles, always to be found in such localities, than if it remained 

 where it killed. Of course a hawk may occasionally be seen having its meal 

 in the open, but it is the exception. As to what becomes of the bones, is a 

 question which must be answered by first taking into consideration the 

 different kinds of hawks and what is most likely to be the extent of their 

 prey for all hawks, in their wild state prefer tackling something considerably 

 smaller than themselves, with the exception of the peregrine {F. communis) 

 and some of the Himalayan eagles, but we will come to them later on. A 

 hawk's digestion is nothing short of marvellous and all ordinary bones that it 

 can break with its beak, it swallows together with the feathers and they seem 

 to rather agree with it than otherwise. The feathers are expectorated every 

 morninc in a ball before the hawk goes out to search for its morning meal. 



I shall beoin with the small hawks, such as the merlins, sparrow-hawks, 

 &c. They seldom rise to anything bigger than sparrows, finches, wagtails 

 and similar birds and these are eaten till not a vestige remains to tell the tale, 

 except a few feathers. The luggur falcon (F. juggur) generally preys upon 

 rats bats lizards, &c., but will also tackle minahs, babblers and even seesee and 

 partridges, but as they invariably hunt in pairs even a partridge is by no 

 means a big meal between two. The same rule is apphcable more or less 

 throughout, viz., that a hawk will nearly always prey upon something it is 

 capable of eating every scrap of. The Chirug {Hierofako saher') though it 

 can be easily trained to kite, hare, houbara, &c., prefers in its wild state to 

 live on rats, lizards and small birds. The peregrine (F. communis) and some- 

 times the Shaheen {F. iieregrinator) prey a good deal on duck which they 

 certainly cannot devour entirely, but as I mentioned before their hunting 

 grounds are chiefly open plains, river beds or jheels where any remnants Ij-ing 

 about would very soon catch the eye of some passing harrier, or kite and be 

 made short work of or carried away. In the Himalayas we have the eagles 

 which tackle monaul, tragopan, tnow=cock, &c., and it is chiefly to these that 



