Prairie Falcon
Prairie Falcon: Medium falcon with brown upperparts, dark-spotted pale underparts, dark brown moustache stripe. Dark underwing-bars visible in flight. Feeds on small birds and mammals, and large insects. Swift flight with rapid wing beats. Sometimes alternates several rapid wing beats with a glide.
● Song:
"kree-kree-kree"
● Foraging & Feeding:
Prairie Falcon: Diet consists mainly of birds, which it pursues on the wing but usually captures on or near the ground. Also feeds on small mammals such as prairie dogs and young rabbits.
● Breeding & nesting:
Prairie Falcon: Four to five white eggs, heavily marked with brown and purple, are laid in a scrape of loose dirt on a cliff ledge, cave, or crevice, or sometimes in an abandoned nest of another species. Incubation ranges from 29 to 31 days and is carried out mainly by the female.
● Similar species:
Prairie Falcon: Merlin is much smaller, has a less distinct moustache stripe, more strongly barred tail, and lacks distinctive black mark on underwings. Peregrine Falcon lacks pale stripe behind eye, has thicker moustache stripe, wings that reach tail tip at rest, and lacks black underwing patches.