🦅 Other Falconry Birds · 6 min
What makes a falcon a falcon
Why this matters
The genus Falco is defined by a set of hard anatomical and behavioural facts, and nearly every question in this section keys off one of them.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- Name the defining anatomical feature of a true falcon
- Explain how falcons kill, and how that differs from buteos and accipiters
- Describe falcon nesting and muting habits
The tooth
All true falcons in the genus Falco have a "toothed" or notched beak. The tomial teeth sit on the maxilla (upper mandible); the notches are on the lower mandible. Four projections in total, two upper and two lower.
How falcons kill
Not by crushing. Falcons sever the spinal cord with the beak, often with a single well-placed bite, using exactly those tomial teeth. Buteos and accipiters kill with grip. That is why "large falcons kill primarily by the gripping power of their feet" is false, and why the Red-tailed Hawk, not the Peregrine, is the bird that kills with its feet.
Large falcons capture prey by binding and striking, both.
Nesting and muting
True falcons do not build stick nests. They use ledges, hollow trees, the old nests of other species and manmade structures. Accipiters, buteos and eagles build their own. (Caracaras and forest falcons are the exception among the Falconidae, but they build.)
Slicing, the forcible discharge of excrement, is done by accipiters, buteos and eagles. Falcons drop their mutes straight down once they have left the eyrie. So the bird least likely to slice is the Peregrine.
This lesson is part of the NY Falconry Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.