“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything unusual,” Alice Tucker said in answer to my question.

“—Although, we did have an experience with a goshawk.  We have a bird feeder under an evergreen tree outside our window.  A goshawk learned that when I came out the door to fill the bird feeder, the quail would all run for cover.  He’d be perching in the trees on the other side of the fence.

“His timing was impeccable.  When he’d see me open the door he’d take off flying my direction so that he’d be overhead as the quail started to run.  They’d head for the juniper bushes and hide inside.  Down he’d swoop, and would get one nearly every time.  If he’d miss, he’d land beside the junipers and walk around them peering inside.

“And, oh, I had an experience with a snake when we lived in North Carolina.  We had black snakes.  They’re a long, thick snake.  I was sitting outside shelling peas, and watching the new baby chicks when suddenly a big, black snake lunged through the fence and grabbed one.

“Black snakes are constrictors, so he coiled himself around the chick.  I ran over and wondered what to do.  The snake was just a big coil.  I couldn’t see the chick at first, but then its little head appeared.  It looked right at me like it was saying, ‘help!’

“That aroused my maternal instincts, so I reached down and grabbed the snake by the tail and lifted him up.  The snake just unrolled.  The chick scurried away.  The snake was mad about losing its dinner, and was reaching around trying to bite me, so I threw it as far as I could.

“Then I ran to get Vance to help me gather up the chicks before the cats got them.  You’d think that the snake would have had enough, but when we returned he was coming right back to try again.  We should have dispatched him, but Vance took him out in the woods and let him go.

“Several weeks later, when the chicks were bigger, we moved them into the hen house.  One morning we found a dead chicken.  Its head was all wet.  A snake had tried to swallow it, but the chicken was too big, so he had to give up.

“The next morning there was another dead chicken.  We knew we had to do something, so we set up an intercom system.  The snake didn’t come that night, but we learned a lot about chickens.  About every 30 minutes there would be a squabble as one hen encroached on another hen’s perching area.

“The next night Vance was talking on the phone to his sister when we heard a long, scraping sound—like a snake would make as it slithered over a microphone.  Vance said, ‘If that’s the snake we ought to hear a commotion in about a minute.’

“Sure enough, in one minute pandemonium broke out in the hen house.  Vance said to his sister, “Got to go.  There’s a snake in the hen house!’ and slammed down the receiver.

“This time we dispatched the snake.  It was probably the same one we’d had trouble with before, because we had no further trouble.

“This one was a particularly aggressive snake.  Usually they’re pretty docile, but this one had been out in the cherry tree.  Vance tried to get him out, and the snake would lunge at him.

“Black snakes are built to be egg eaters.  They have a sharp bone on their spine.  When they swallow an egg you can see it making a big bulge behind the head.  Then the snake squeezes, you hear a crack as that bone breaks the egg, and the bulge disappears.”

“That bone is a handy devise to have,” I replied.  “In Wyoming my grandmother told of going out to gather the eggs, and found a snake stuck in a knothole between nests.  It had swallowed an egg in one nest, reached through the knothole and swallowed an egg in the next nest, and was stuck there with an egg bulge on either side of the knothole.”

“The most fascinating thing I think I’ve seen” Alice continued, “was watching peregrine falcons.  For several consecutive summers we went to Colorado to study peregrines.  A pair of them lived atop a 1500-foot cliff that overlooked a little valley.

“Through the binoculars you could watch the peregrine perched up on the cliff.  When he’d see something interesting, you’d see him lean forward, and then he’d take off.  He’d flap his wings and fly out over the valley.  When he’d gotten into the right position, you’d see him fold his wings in against his body and drop into a dive.

“The speed of his dive was just incredible.  It was very difficult to keep the binoculars focused on him.  Sometimes he’d grab the bird he was after in midair.  As he flew back to the cliff you could hear his mate calling to him.  Sometimes he’d take his catch to her, and other times he’d go stash his catch somewhere to be eaten later.

“Sometimes he wouldn’t catch the bird after he’d hit it.  On those occasions you’d see him make a big circle as he’d fly up and around, and come in below the falling bird and catch it as it fell past.

“As he flew back to the nest his mate might fly out to meet him.  As they met in the air she’d fly in below him, turn upside down, and take the bird from him.

“He was a good provider.  He started hunting about 8:00 each morning.  He was successful 50% of the time.  He’d work for about an hour, and then he was done for the day.

“We watched him for two years.  We watched him for two days after we arrived the third year, and then he disappeared.  Somehow he’d been killed.

“His wife later found a new mate, but he wasn’t as skilled as her first one.  Maybe her second mate was younger and more inexperienced, but he was successful in making a catch only about one in ten tries.”