"Lew Hartswick" wrote in message
ink.net...
Ed Huntress wrote:

Falcons seem to be very adaptable. There are a couple of nests of
Peregrines
that have been living on the sides of tall buildings in New York City.
The
littlest falcons, the Kestrels (they're called "sparrow hawks" here)
live
all over the state. It's been some years now but I saw a Merlin (also
called
a "duck hawk"), a falcon just slightly smaller than a Peregrine and
similarly colored, near the Delaware River.

You could get some numbers on overall eastern populations from the
records
the birders keep at Hawk Mountain in PA, or from similar ones kept at
Cape
May, NJ, which are two hotspots for the raptor migrations. There must be
something similar in the West.


Ed Huntress

Yes we have a spot on Sandia (above the Tijeras canyon) called
Hawk Watch, where they do the anual migration count for the
eastern part of the Rockies.
...lew...

Yeah, I figured you must have some flyway hotspots out there.

BTW, my memory failed me on the Merlins. They used to be called "pigeon
hawks" out here, not duck hawks. Duck hawks were the Peregrines. Both were
extremely rare when I was a kid; I knew them by reputation only, until they
started their comeback in the early '80s.

--
Ed Huntress