Mar. , 1913 
NESTING OF THE PRAIRIE FALCON 
57 
Curse for curse and blow for blow, you jolly old pirate! Hide your treasures in 
the remotest cranny of the uttermost wilderness, if you will, and I shall find 
them ; and if I find them, they are mine ; and if I reach them, you may wreak 
your vengeance on whom you will. I will not even reproach you for the rape of 
pullets nor the carnage of cpiails. Go to it, old sport ! Fill the air with shrieks 
and call heaven to witness what a rogue you are ! Aye, but you’re a gay fowl, 
and Fm o’er fond of you ! 
The first requirement of the Prairie Falcon is open country ; and the sec- 
ond a cranny where she may lay her young. These conditions are ideally met 
in a low range of hills which run north and south through eastern San Luis 
Obispo County, and form the back-bone of that “cattle country’’ made famous in 
story and song by deeds of vaquero and misdeeds of lirigand. To the westward 
lie other rolling hills carpeted with bunch grass and dotted with oaks. To the 
eastward stretches the arid interior plain. This cardinal ridge, bv reason of the 
Fig. 10. A Nesting Haunt of the Prairie P'alcon 
torrential character of the occasional rains of that country, is deeply scored by 
lateral canyons, and “breaks” in a thousand walls, walls which vary in ajipear- 
ance from the sloping adobe of the north to the rugged escarpments of sand- 
stone, conglomerate, and Pecten beds, which front the upper San Juan. Here 
are the castles, and there are the banquetting tables. For the jiresence of cattle 
means insects, and insects imply insect-eating birds, and Iiiscciivorcs mean Rap- 
torcs. If we use birds-of-prey in the economic instead of the structural sense, and so 
include Magpie, Raven, and Shrike, then this cattle country is ravaged by no less 
than 23 .species of feathered bandits (and ghouls) ; and of these we actually saw 
nineteen in the course of a three weeks’ reconnoissance last April. 
Of r'akones proper, after the ubiquitous Kestrel (why “Sparrowhawk” ?) , 
the Prairie Falcon is most numerous in fact and least evident to casual notice. 
It is his proper domain, but he rules it invisibly, from on high. His business with 
