Hi all,

Thursday, my wife and I came home from work to find clues to an avian drama that had played itself out sometime earlier in the day. We have several feeders in the backyard and since there was snow on the ground Thursday morning, I put out more seed than normal and broadcast some on the ground as well. This tends to bring in more than the normal quota of Rock Doves. Whatever the number of Rock Doves that came to feed, they departed with one less bird in the flock.

The evidence of this was very easy to see on the snow. There were two intact wings, held together by only a string of tissue. About six feet away from the wings was a pile of feathers where the bird had been plucked, and in between, a spot of bloody snow - perhaps where the initial kill was made (or landed if it was hit in the air). That was it - no guts, no head, no feet, no bones - just the severed wings and the plucked feathers. Had there not been snow on the ground, I couldn't have ruled out a mammal having carried off what remained of the carcass. Except...there were no tracks in the snow around the scene except bird tracks and a set of deer tracks that meandered around the yard.

The two most probable suspects in my mind would be Cooper's Hawk and Peregrine. After doing some reading on feeding habits, I'm leaning toward the Peregrine Falcon. The absence of anything left behind at the scene except the wings and feathers - coupled with no other scavenger animal tracks - would indicate that whatever made the kill plucked the prey on the ground, tore off the wings and then flew off with the remainder to eat somewhere else. The Peregrine would seem more capable of this than a Cooper's Hawk, I would think. Wheeler's accounts of the feeding habits of both species seemed to indicate that the Cooper's Hawk is more likely to consume the prey on the ground near where it was caught than the Peregrine and also mentioned that Peregrines will sometimes remove the wings from avian prey.

In any event, it was an interesting scene to ponder, and left me wishing I had been there when it happened to get a first hand view. Especially if it was a Peregrine...

Anyone have any similar experiences that suggest what type of raptor this was?


John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
johntubbs at comcast.net
www.tubbsphoto.com