Hi all,

I received a number of responses to the 'raptor whodunnit' post I made, mostly off-list. Thanks to those who responded and, not surprisingly I suppose, opinions were about equally divided between Cooper's Hawk and Peregrine Falcon as the answer to the mystery.

We'll never know, of course, unless the hunter returns when there are witnesses - and even then not for sure, since I've seen both hawks and falcons in the area.

One other factor that I hadn't thought about in my initial post is an observation Bud Anderson made in the raptor class I took from him recently. He indicated that male Peregrines will often bring 'gifts' of food back to the female in the courtship/breeding phase of their annual cycle - to the extent that he has seen the tops of cliffs which held a scrape littered with prey birds that had been brought back. If the successful hunter was a Peregrine, this might explain why nothing more than the wings and feathers were left, despite the experience of several people whose experience indicated peregrines generally leave a carcass behind after eating the breast meat.

Thanks again to those who responded!

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