The Prairie Falcon 



hostilities sends her off on the instant to screak and soar or tower and 

 stoop. 



Of course it will be remembered that the female Prairie Falcon is the 

 larger and "better" bird, as is the case with most Raptors. She is the 

 more aggressive and feels the greater interest in the welfare of her brood, 

 probably because the duties of incubation fall chiefly to her. It was 

 several years before I even so much as saw a male Prairie incubating, but 

 several such examples have more recently come to hand, so that I presume 

 it is largely a matter of individuality, after all. The unpracticed eye can 

 soon distinguish the larger proportions of the female, but it takes a prac- 

 ticed ear, or close individual association, to catch the difference in timbre 

 or weight between the voices of the two sexes. Here, again, individuality 

 counts, but the voices of the males average lighter. 



The assaults of an angry Falcon are really dangerous. Even when 

 the earliest efforts are discouraged by a show of sticks or stones, it is decid- 

 edly disconcerting to feel the rush of air from a passing falcon-wing upon 

 your hatless pate, or to mark the instant change in pitch from the shrill 

 uproar of impending doom to the guttural notes of baffled retreat. The 

 Falcon has a nasty temper at best, and if she dare not vent her spite on 

 you, she Avill fall upon the first wight who crosses her path. Woe betide 

 the luckless Barn Owl who flaps forth from his polluted den hard by to 

 learn the cause of the disturbance. I have seen such bowled into the 

 sage in a trice, and Kelly declares that he has several times seen them 

 struck dead. At such times also the Raven is put on trial for his life. 

 In spite of their close association, there is evidently an ancient grudge 

 between these birds. Whether or no the ebony saint be at fault, I cannot 

 tell, but certain it is that if a Raven blunders near in the hour of the 

 Falcon's high displeasure, he is fearfully beset. The Raven is an adept 

 at wing-play himself, and the Falcon's thunderbolt is met with a deft 

 evasion which reminds one of the best sword-play. But the Raven 

 takes no pleasure in it. His eyes start with terror, and while he has no 

 time for utterance himself, the distressed cries of his mate proclaim the 

 danger he is in. 



This close association of Falcon and Raven at nesting time is the 

 strangest element in the lives of both of them. To be sure, their require- 

 ments of nesting sites are similar; but it is more than that which induces 

 the birds to nest within a hundred yards of each other in the same canyon, 

 when neighboring or distant canyons offering as excellent sites are empty. 

 So constant indeed is this association that when one finds the Raven's 

 nest, he says, "Well, now, where is the Falcon's?" Of the entire number 

 of Ravens' nests which came under my personal notice in one year, seven 

 were thus associated with nests of the Falcon in the same canyon, and the 



1618 



