All About Hawks

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 285, 8 December 1944, Page 8

All About Hawks

TUNED into 4ZB’s Wild Life in time to hear Dr. R. A. Falla talking about hawks. Whether the word brings to your mind a picture of an aristocratic (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) gauntleted hand with a perched peregtine, or the sparse tussock country of Central Otago with one hovering harrier above, you probably dismiss the bird with a slight shudder, remembering with pity the hundreds of small creatures which provide the lifetime of meals of even one such bird of prey. Dr. Falla, however, would point out that you are judging by human standards a creature of another species, a bird, moreover, particularly adapted for the hunting life it leads; and a bird which plays the necessary part of scavenger, destroying mainly the weaklings which otherwise would breed too prolifically. New Zealand has two kinds of hawks, and the speaker compared them with aeroplane types-the harrier, built on the lines of a bomber for hunting in the open, the smaller, swifter bush-hawk, a fighter capable of striking the head of its prey while diving through the air at a hundred miles per hour. The spectacular hunting of this bird would have to be seen to be believed, as it swoops on its prey in full flight. It is quite pos- | sible to believe, as Dr. Falla mentioned in this talk, that the New Zealand bush hawk, taken overseas, has more than held its own in contests of falconry.