United States or Armenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then he proceeded to tell us of the great raptor in its life of hopeless captivity; his stern, rugged countenance, deep bass voice, and grand mouth-filling polysllables suiting his subject well, and making his description seem to our minds a sombre magnificent picture never to be forgotten at all events, never by an ornithologist.
It struck me very forcibly that the puma of the desert pampas is, among mammals, like the peregrine falcon of the same district among birds; for there this wide-ranging raptor only attacks comparatively large birds, and, after fastidiously picking a meal from the flesh of the head and neck, abandons the untouched body to the polybori and other hawks of the more ignoble sort.
Through these a raptorial stream pours in such numbers during the period of migration that a person with a foreknowledge of their path in former years may lie in wait and watch scores upon scores of these birds pass close overhead within a few hours, while a short distance to the right or left one may watch all day without seeing a single raptor. The whims of migrating birds are beyond our ken.
I must, before concluding this part of my subject, mention another raptor, also a true falcon, but differing from the peregrine in being exclusively a marsh-hawk. In size it is nearly a third less than the male peregrine, which it resembles in its sharp wings and manner of flight, but its flight is much more rapid. The whole plumage, is uniformly of a dark grey colour.
Et si rerum suarem avarus possessor requiem non habebit, quomodo aliaenarum rerum insatiabilis raptor? Meaning, 'And if he who never clothed the naked is sent to the pond of fire and sulphur, where will he, who cruelly stripped them, go? And if the greedy possessor of his own wealth may never rest, how shall it be with the thief, insatiable in his greed for the wealth of others?
Such, to my knowledge, are the Philanthus coronatus, Fabr., which stores its burrows with the large Halictus; the Philanthus raptor, Lep., which chases all the smaller Halictus indifferently, being itself a small insect; the Cerceris ornata, Fabr., which also kills Halictus; and the Polaris flavipes, Fabr., which by a strange eclecticism fills its cells with specimens of most of the Hymenoptera which are not beyond its powers.
Word Of The Day