"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
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. I
don't know if it was a hunting lesson for a young bird or what, but it
was truly baffling to me. AFAIK, falcons aren't know for mercy.

Yeah, that's an interesting story. We think of falcons "stooping," which
means diving at flying prey and knocking it out of the air (and often
killing it in the process), but they actually do most of their hunting like
goshawks, swooping upon prey on the ground, or chasing it down. The little
Kestrels, particularly, catch most of their grasshoppers and mice on the
ground. I've only seen them stoop on small birds a couple of times, when I
lived among a lot of them around 25 years ago.

--
Ed Huntress