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The Caracara in California

Harold Heath

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I notice that according to Grinnell’s Distributional List of California Birds some doubt exists regarding the occurrence of the Caracara within the state. I can say with positive certainty that one individual Caracara (Polyborus cheriway) lived for some time in the vicinity of Monterey during the winter of 1916. To be more exact, the month of February of that year witnessed one of the most severe storms in the history of the state, with southerly and southeasterly gales prevailing for several days. Upon their subsidence one of the wardens of the Pacific Improvement Company reported a strange bird in the vicinity of Seal Rocks. Mr. W. W. Curtner, a student at the Hopkin’s Seaside Laboratory, made an investigation and pronounced the visitor to be a Caracara. The next day both of us journeyed by machine to the spot, made careful observations, took color notes and later examined museum specimens, all of which proved to our entire satisfaction that the bird in question was a female Caracara that probably had been swept before the wind from its southern home.

If we attempted to approach on foot the bird invariably took flight when we were at least an eighth of a mile away, and with alternate flapping of wings and soarings would skim over the level land situaled between the sea and forest to alight in some distant tree. On the other hand, when we remained in the machine we had little difficulty in approaching to less than one hundred feet. Without displaying any particular interest in us the bird would strip bits of bark from its perch, flip them into the air, or would stand erect on its relatively long legs, stretch its wings, preen its feathers and finally vault into the air for another journey along the coast. It remained in the neighborhood of Seal Rocks for two weeks or so, and then, during a brief period of unusually bright weather, disappeared.

Stanford University, California, March 19, 1919

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