Dennis Paulson writes:

> ... Note also that lots of nocturnal migrants do
> migrate by day when they cross water bodies too wide for a single night's
> flight. Eleonora's Falcons couldn't make a living if there weren't lots of
> passerines migrating across the Mediterranean and North Africa by day.

There is somtehing quite intersting with this Falcon: It nests quite late in
the season.
Why ?
This late breeding strategy ables its young to take advantage of the song birds
post-breeding migration (BTW, Michael, re the name given to migrations: in
french, we say pre-breeding and post-breeding migration; I think it is better
than northbound and southbound -- not to mention spring and fall -- because it
also works for the southern hemisphere). Lots of young song birds are not
really experimented at this time of year, so it's easier for young Eleonoras
to catch them and improve their skills.


> It's interesting we don't have an equivalent bird in this hemisphere.

^^^^^^^^^^
Mind you, Europe and North Africa are in the same hemisphere as North America,
i.e. the northern hemisphere :-)

I don't know much about the migration pattern in North America, but I guess
you would imagine such a bird to live in the Caribbean Islands, am I right ?


--
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A bird in the bush is better than two in the hand.

Serge Le Huitouze Intelligent Software Group
email: serge at cs.sfu.ca School of Computing Science
tel: (604) 291-5423 Simon Fraser University
fax: (604) 291-3045 Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6 CANADA