Hi Tweets,

Chris Hill writes:

(snip)
>It turned out the Peregrine was diving at a
>perched Red-tailed Hawk, and was KAK-KAK-KAK-KAK-ing for all it was worth
(snip)
>I'd never heard a Peregrine vocalize like that except on tape, and had
>always thought that call was associated with nest defense.

More like associated with aggression of any kind, sexual or territorial;
generically, falcons don't seem to have much vocabulary beyond 'kek' and
variations such as 'kek-kek' or even 'kek-kek-kek'.

Whenever attacking and harassing another eagle, hawk or falcon, or
roughhousing in what passes for play with him, Vancouver's downtown falcon,
Clint, unleashes a string of profanity-laden 'kek-kek-kek's'. When he's
*really* steamed, as he was once attacking an eagle, he screamed as well:
'keeeeeeyek-kek-kek-kek!' and sat on one of the masts of Canada Place
trash-mouthing for several minutes after the eagle had buggered off and he
cooled down. While I suspect a direct translation of what ol' Clint would
actually be saying if it were a human in a similar context would be far too
acrid for the delicate ears of Tweeterdom's profanity-police, it would
definitely be more colloquial than "I say, old top, this harbor and the
resources therein are previously taken by yours truly, so would you be a
good chap and move along? Thanks *awfully*."

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net

"She's psychic....we've decided to find it charming."
--Frasier