Falcon
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Falcon. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
faw'k'n, a large family of birds of prey, including the eagle and the hawk. The falcon of history--the bird chiefly employed in hawking or falconry--is the peregrine falcon, a bold, long-winged, swift game hawk, found on both continents. In America it is called usually the duck hawk. The male is about sixteen inches in length; the female, nineteen; upper parts dark bluish slate color; under parts cream-buff, barred and spotted with black except on the breast. The female falcon, as is true of the family in general, is larger than her mate. The falcon nests on rocky cliffs or in hollow limbs of tall trees. Before the day of gunpowder falcons were trained to take game. The young falcon, the female preferred for its greater strength and fierceness, was brought from the nest on a cliff and taught by hunger to submit to handling and to fly at a lure for its food. The lure was a bunch of feathers surrounding a bit of wood on which a piece of meat might be fixed. The lure was whirled about the falconer's head by a thong. When fully trained the hawk was taken afield, blinded by a leathern hood, which was removed and the falcon set free when a game bird, particularly a heron, was espied. Usually a cast, or pair of hawks, were sent in pursuit. They aimed to rise above the heron and "strike" swiftly on the descent. First one hawk would strike, then the other, by which time the first would have risen again, so that the game could hardly hope to evade both for any length of time. Immediately after bringing down the game the falcons were urged by a familiar whistle to fly to their lures for food, when they were secured by a short thong hanging from the leg. As a further precaution against escape the falcon wore a bell strapped to one leg. Falconry reached its greatest height in England after the Norman conquest. It was regarded as a royal sport. None of lower rank than an earl might ride in procession with a hawk resting on the wrist. King Harold is represented in the Bayeux tapestry with a hawk on hand. The Arabs of North Africa are said to employ the falcon to this day in hunting the bustard. See Hawk ; Eagle
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FAUCON, FAUCOUN, or
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 entry calls the falcon "a large family of birds of prey, including the eagle and the hawk"; modern classification separates them entirely, and DNA evidence has placed the falcons (Falconidae) closer to parrots and songbirds than to eagles and true hawks. The peregrine itself, which Aiton's says Americans "usually" call the duck hawk, all but vanished from the eastern United States in the 1950s and 1960s as DDT thinned its eggshells; after the pesticide was banned in the U.S. in 1972 and captive-bred birds were released, it was removed from the American endangered species list in 1999 and now nests on bridges and office towers as readily as on the "rocky cliffs" described here. The stoop that both entries describe has since been measured: the peregrine is the fastest animal on earth, exceeding 200 mph in a dive. Falconry, treated here as a lapsed medieval sport surviving only among "the Arabs of North Africa," is now practised worldwide and was added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2010.
Written for this edition, 2026.