Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE FALCON-LIKE BIRDS

(Order Falconiformes)

It is a fact well known that among the mammals there are certain groups — the so-called carnivores — which are especially adapted for preying upon their fellows. Among the birds there are also groups the members of which are fitted in one way or another for an equally rapacious existence, inasmuch as they obtain their entire subsistence from animal life, most of which they pursue and capture alive. The most prominent of these rapacious groups of birds was formerly, and indeed may still conveniently be called, the Raptores, or Birds of Prey.

It was divided into two parts, the Diurnal Birds of Prey, or those which mainly seek their food by daylight, as Eagles and Hawks, and the Nocturnal Birds of Prey, typified by the Owls, which secure most of their prey by night.

This implied a more or less close relationship between the Eagles, Hawks, and allied forms, and the Owls; but investigation in recent years has settled pretty conclusively that, beyond the similarity of their adaptation for rapacious life, there is little or no real relationship between them. The Owls could not possibly have been derived from existing Diurnal Birds of Prey, nor even from a common ancestor, but appear to find their closest relatives among the Roller-like birds, where they are accordingly placed. Their affinities and interrelationships will be fully considered under that group.

Among the Falcon-like birds the adaptation to a raptorial mode of life has so profoundly modified the skeleton that much of the evidence concerning the origin of the group has been defaced or obscured.

According to Beddard, and this is confirmed by Pycraft, — both eminent anatomists, — it appears that the evidence points to the derivation of this group from the Stork-like birds, not, of course, directly from the modern representatives, but at a point low down on the gruine stem, even before the characters common to the diverging branches of Storks and Cranes began to undergo transformation.

It is not necessary to go further into this matter at present, but it may be stated that much remains to be done in the way of investigating the skeletal and other characters within this and neighboring groups before the final word can be said.

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