Science: Majestic Bird

The slate-grey and black-barred peregrine falcon (duck hawk) is one of the speediest and most powerful of all flying organisms. It flies on the level at 60 m.p.h., dives at 180, knocks out its quarry (birds up to the size of duck) with its steely talons, kills only what it will eat. Its attacks are always made from open sky, and what it does not kill with the first attack, it seldom bothers to pursue. The late Gerald H. Thayer once admiringly described the peregrine falcon as a “powerful, wild, majestic, independent bird, living on the choicest of clean carnal food plucked fresh from the air or the surface of the waters; rearing its young in the nooks of dangerous mountain cliffs … It is the very embodiment of noble rapacity and lonely freedom.”

Falcons have an impressive history. More than 4,000 years ago they were used for hunting by the Chinese. Falconry (the art of directing a falcon to take off, attack its prey and return to the extended arm of its trainer) was the sport of kings throughout the Middle Ages.

Last week U.S. bird watchers had an eye peeled for the peregrine falcons which were migrating from the northeastern U.S. and Canada to the Gulf states and the Caribbean. But not all were migrating this month. The New York World-Telegram and Sun noted that a very few will winter-as-usual, of all places, high on craggy skyscrapers in Manhattan. There they have found ledges as bare and precipitous as any mountain falcon eyrie. And they have a year-round food supply in the thousands of fat and sassy Manhattan pigeons who linger below.