Peregrine Falcon Small

“Falco peregrinus. Peregrine Falcon. Duck Hawk. Great-footed Hawk. A medium-sized falcon, about as large as the foregoing, but known at a glance from any bird of N. Am. by the slaty-plumbeous or dark bluish-ash of the upper parts, the black “moustache,” and other marks, taken with its particular size and shape. Wings stiff, long, thin, pointed by the 2d quill, supported nearly to its tip by 1st and 3d; 1st quill alone abruptly emarginate on inner web, this about 2 inches from its tip; none cut on outer webs. Tomium of upper mandible strongly toothed, of under mandible deeply notched. Tarsus feathered but a little way down in front, otherwise entirely reticulate; toes very long, giving great grasp to the talons. Adult: Above rich dark bluish-ash or slate-color, very variable, sometimes quite slaty-blackish, again much lighter bluish-slate; the tint pretty uniform, whatever it may be, over all the upper parts, but all the feathers with somewhat paler edges, and the larger ones for the most part obscurely barred with lighter and darker hues. Under parts at large varying from nearly pure white to a peculiar muddy buff color of different degrees of intensity; the throat and breast usually free from markings (or only with a few sharp shaft pencillings), and this white or light color mounting on the auriculars, so that it partly isolates a blackish moustache from the blackish of the side of the head; the under parts, except as said, and including the under wing- and tail-coverts closely and regularly barred, or less closely and more irregularly spotted, with blackish; the bars best pronounced on the flanks, tibiae, and crissum, other parts tending to spotting, which may extend forward to invade the breast (this is the rule in European birds, the exception, though not a rare one, in American birds). Tail and its upper coverts regularly and closely barred with blackish and ashy-gray, the interspacing best marked on the inner webs, and all the feathers narrowly tipped with white or whitish.” Elliot Coues, 1884

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