100 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



to a sparrow, but usually chooses birds of medium size, such as pigeons, 

 flickers, plover and small ducks. It pursues its chosen quarry with astonish- 

 ing rapidity, the wing strokes resembling more the flight of a pigeon than 

 that of our common hawks. It rarely soars except for an instant in making 

 a turn, or after it has struck its prey in mid-air, or has made an unsuccess- 

 ful attack and wheels to reconnoitre. I once saw a Duck hawk come like 

 a descending rocket and snatch a gold finch in the air so suddenly that 

 the poor finch apparently was not aware of its enemy or, if so, had no time 

 to change its course to an appreciable degree. Mr Parker has described 

 the actions Of a falcon which came to the Montezuma marshes with the 

 migrating shore birds in August 1908, as particularly cruel and destructive. 

 It would pursue the flocks of sandpipers and plover, striking one after 

 another into the mud or water, but seldom pausing to devour or carry off 

 its plunder. Whenever the falcon appears over the marshes all the ducks 

 within sight exhibit the greatest distress, but when an eagle. Red-tail or 

 Marsh hawk comes over they are not at all concerned. It is not an unusual 

 experience for this daring pirate to carry off a hunter's decoy or a wounded 

 duck so rapidly and unexpectedly that the gun is powerless against him. 



The nest of this falcon is almost always placed on a ledge or opening 

 in the rocks of some precipitous cliff, and in this State the eggs are laid from 

 March 30 to April 20. These are 3 or 4 in number, about 2.1 by 1.7 inches 

 in dimensions, of a color ranging from light buff to reddish brown and 

 heavily marked with cinnamon and dark reddish brown. The young 

 nestlings are covered with white down, but soon the brown feathers of the 

 Juvenal plumage appear on the wings, tail and scapulars, at the age of 

 about four weeks entirely displacing or concealing the nestling down. 

 Both sexes of the eyas or young falcon, unlike the subgenus Cerchneis, are 

 similar in coloration, dark brown above and heavily streaked below, and 

 do not show the ashy or slaty color of the adults nor the barring of 

 the under parts till after the first complete moult. As the nestling 

 falcon approaches the age for leaving the eyry, its restless disposition 

 asserts itself, and it screams and hops and tries its wings about its native 



