HUNTING TACTICS OFPEREGRINES AND OTHER FALCONS. By Dick Dekker.

(2009) 2024 paperback reprint. 8vo paperback (170 x 243mm). Pp192. B/w photographs, tables and graphs, extensive bibliography.

"An outstanding scientific achievement - unprecendented really. This book, by a self-taught naturalist working mostly alone, reveals how careful and sustained field observations can yield fundamental scientific insights into how a predator interacts with and influences its prey. ...[The author's] work, spanning 48 years and based on 4,000 hunts and 460 kills by wild peregrines has no parallel in the history of studies on birds of prey." (Dr. Tom J. Cade). The basis of this book is Dr. Dekker's thesis for his PhD awarded by the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. Chapters include: Introduction; Peregrine migrations in Alberta; Hunting strategies of migrating peregrins; Duck hunting by migrating and wintering peregrines; Foraging habits of wintering peregrines; Marine peregrines hunting seabirds; Over-ocean flocking by wintering dunlins; Peregrine predation on dunlins in relation to ocean tides; Peregrine prey selection and eagle interference; Co-operative hunting by parent peregrines and theirfledglings; A comparison of peregrines and merlins hunting small shorebirds and passerines; Nest site competition between peregrines and prairie falcons; Gyrfalcons and prairie falcons hunting city pigeons; Gyrfalcons and bald eagles hunting wintering mallards; Herfsttrek en jachtgewoontes van de Slechtvalk in Friesland (Autumn migration and hunting habits of the peregrine falcon in Frisia); Discussion and synthesis. Two introductory chapters are in Dutch, the rest of the book is in English.