In article ,
Larry Jaques wrote:

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 23:34:36 -0500, the inscrutable "Ed Huntress"
spake:

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.

A couple weeks ago I had what I believe was a Peregrine falcon land in
my back yard with a bird in its clutches. It stood there for a minute,
so I ran to grab my camera and got some blurry shots (autofocus
doesn't like slanted shots) through the glass. When I slowly opened
the door to take a live shot, it dropped the bird and both flew off.
This falcon stood there with the terrified (but unharmed) cheeping
finch in its talons for nearly two minutes, just looking around.

Unless I've failed to understand completely, if it's something much
smaller than the raptor, like a finch, or maybe a mouse, squirrel, or
similar, many will bind on the target and simply keep squeezing until it
stops moving, then once they've got it squeezed to death (or at least
unconcious enough that it's not likely gonna vamoose as soon as the
raptor opens its claw to bite it) they'll put a strategically placed
"make sure it's dead" chomp on it, then start munching. Not all that
much different from a boa constrictor in method, even though the
mechanism differs. But not quite as long, with bigger wings, and
feathers, of course.

Now for bigger stuff (rabbit and up, ducks, geese, etc, where body mass
of prey versus body mass of raptor is more or less even, or perhaps even
in the prey's favor) they tend to latch on *HARD* with talons somewhere
along the target's spine, puncturing as much as possible (and often
"kneading" the target to do even more damage, if birders' logbooks I've
read are any indication), then chew through the base of the skull/top of
the neck to sever the spinal column to complete the kill. Depending on
the relative sizes of raptor and target, "chew" might mean one almighty
"chomp" and the head falls off, or a series of bites that "works its way
down" to the spinal column before actually cutting it. Which is probably
the method you're "used to", or at least "expect" to see from a raptor.

--
Don Bruder - - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
subject unless it comes from a "whitelisted" (pre-approved by me) address.
See http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html for full details.