Migrant birds heading south across the Mediterranean for winter encounter many dangers, but few meet a worse potential fate than those that get too close to an Eleonora’s falcon.
Observations suggest that these cliff-nesting raptors take ruthlessness to a new level. In 2016 ornithologists led by Abdeljebbar Qninba of Morocco’s Mohammed V University made what appears to be a grisly discovery in the country’s Mogador archipelago.
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They found several small migrants trapped in fissures and holes in the rocks around Eleonora’s falcon nests. Some had had their flight feathers plucked, but all of them were still very much alive.
“Keeping prey alive for one or two days (the precise period is not known) may provide the falcon with fresh food at the right time, because dead prey dries out quickly and soon becomes inedible,” wrote the researchers.
Will Cresswell, an ornithologist at the University of St Andrews, commented on the study. “Partial plucking by falcons is common, as is caching dead prey. So it’s not a big step to cache prey alive.”
But he is not convinced that the falcons are actively imprisoning their victims. The migrants might be sheltering in the rock having escaped the raptors’ clutches, for example.
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Or perhaps they havebeen plucked and released for easy pickings later. As yet no one has witnessed a falcon either stashing a victim or returning to eat it.
Qninba notes that falcons cache dead prey with flight feathers intact. “The fact that some live prey had been plucked suggests that they had not escaped death but had been manipulated by the falcons,” he told BBC Wildlife.
Despite his reservations, Cresswell is intrigued: “Much of scientific ornithology and behavioural ecology starts with an anecdote like this, but we need aproper scientific study before we can move from a suggestive story to the truth. I look forward to seeing how this one plays out.”
