Falcons | Falconidae

Valken | Halcones

The cutting edge of the upper mandible carries a sharp tooth that fits a notch in the lower: falcons kill with a bite through the neck, not with the crushing power of the foot as hawks do. The wing is long and pointed and the beat stiff and rowing; inside the nostril sits a small bony knob that breaks the airflow in fast dives. The smallest member of the family is the size of a sparrow and hunts lizards and insects from a low perch; the largest take doves and francolins in the air. They make no nest but lay on a cliff ledge, in a tree hole, on a building or in a disused nest of a crow, a raptor or a hamerkop; the pygmy falcon lays inside one of the chambers of the sociable weaver's communal haystack. The eggs are buff and densely covered with red-brown markings, which separates them from the white or bluish eggs of the other diurnal raptors; the clutch is usually two to five, incubated mostly by the female while the male brings the food. A few species are present in numbers outside the breeding season and then roost communally in trees in villages and towns, with hundreds to many thousands of birds at a single site.