The Peregrine possesses one very curious habit. When a plover, pigeon, or duck is killed, it eats the skin and flesh of the head and neck, picking the vertebræ clean of the flesh down to the breast-bone, and also eating the eyes, but leaving the body untouched. I have found scores of dead birds with head and neck picked clean in this way; and once I watched for some months a Peregrine which had established itself near my home, where it made havoc among the Pigeons; and I frequently marked the spot to which it carried its prey, and on going to the place always found that the Pigeon’s head and neck only had been stripped of flesh. The Burrowing-Owl has an analogous habit, for it invariably rejects the hind quarters of the toads and frogs which it captures.
At the approach of the warm season the Peregrines are often seen in twos and threes violently pursuing each other at a great height in the air, and uttering shrill piercing screams, which can be heard distinctly after the birds have disappeared from sight.
[304.] FALCO FUSCO-CÆRULESCENS, Vieill.
(ORANGE-CHESTED HOBBY.)
Falco femoralis, Burm. La-Plata Reise, ii. p. 437 (Pampas). Hypotriorchis femoralis, Scl. et Salv. Nomencl. p. 121; iid. P. Z. S. 1868, p. 143 (Buenos Ayres); Hudson, P. Z. S. 1872, p. 536 (Rio Negro); Durnford, Ibis, 1877, p. 187, (Buenos Ayres), et 1878, p. 398 (Patagonia); Salvin, Ibis, 1880, p. 362 (Salta); Gibson, Ibis, 1879, p. 412 (Buenos Ayres); White, P. Z. S. 1883, p. 41 (Cordova); Withington, Ibis, 1888, p. 470 (Lomas de Zamora). Falco fusco-cærulescens, Sharpe, Cat. B. p. 400.
Description.—Above dull slaty blackish, rump variegated with white; superciliaries lengthened and joined behind on the nape rufous: beneath, throat and breast pale cinnamomeous with black shaft-stripes on the breast; broad band across the belly black, with slight white transverse lines; lower belly and thighs clear cinnamomeous; wings and tail blackish with transverse white bars; bill yellow with black tip; feet orange, claws black: whole length 13·5 inches, wing 10·0, tail 7·0. Female similar, but larger.
Hab. Central and South America.
The Orange-chested Hobby is found throughout South and Central America, but the form met with here differs, to some extent, in habits from its representatives of the hotter region. It is a Patagonian bird, the most common Falcon in that country, and is migratory, wintering in the southern and central Argentine provinces. In its winter home it is solitary, and fond of hovering about farm-houses, where it sits on a tree or post and looks out for its prey. Compared with the Peregrine it has a very poor spirit, and I have often watched it give chase to a bird, and just when it seemed about to grasp its prey, give up the pursuit and slink ingloriously away. It never boldly and openly attacks any bird, except of the smallest species, and prefers to perch on an elevation from which it can dart down suddenly and take its prey by surprise.
The nest is a slovenly structure of sticks on a thorny bush or tree. The eggs, which I have not seen, Darwin describes as follows:—“Surface rough with white projecting points; colour nearly uniform dirty wood-brown; general appearance as if it had been rubbed in brown mud.”