A male Snowy Owl attacks. Note the “hairy” soles of the feet and effective “catcher’s mitt” configuration of the eight talons. When attacking animals the size of an Arctic hare, Snowy Owls are reported to bind to the prey with one foot and use the other foot as a brake, digging into the snow. —ROB PALMER

A Swainson’s Hawk swallows whole a huge snake, a favorite food item in regions where the reptiles are abundant. Elsewhere, these raptors hunt mostly rodents such as mice, voles, pocket gophers, and ground squirrels during the breeding season. Over the winter Swainson’s Hawks almost exclusively eat insects: crickets, beetles, and as many as one hundred grasshoppers in one day. —ROB PALMER.

A mother and young at the nest entrance with a decoration that appears to be a shed snake skin. In what is unusual behavior compared to most owls, Burrowing Owls collect items, such as dried scraps of skin, bone, and cloth, to scatter around the burrow entrance and line the burrow and nest chamber. They are especially fond of cow and horse manure, which has been found to attract dung beetles, an important food source, especially for the youngsters. —ROB PALMER

Golden Eagles may have home ranges for nesting and foraging of up to 20 square miles. The extent of ranging depends on food supplies and may be relatively small in areas where prey is abundant. —NICK DUNLOP

As of September 2010, 192 California Condors existed in the wild—94 in California, with the rest in Arizona near the Grand Canyon. Pairs breed at about six to eight years of age, are monogamous, and remain together year-round. There is only one egg per clutch. —NICK DUNLOP

Rob Palmer has taken an amazing series of photographs of Bald Eagles catching starlings and blackbirds in the air over a feedlot in Colorado. The owners were using a neurotoxin to try to control the starlings and blackbirds, and Palmer suspects that caused them to fly erratically and become targets for the waiting eagles. —ROB PALMER

A male Taiga Merlin stretching in California. —NICK DUNLOP

Never far from water except during migration, Common Black Hawks specialize in aquatic prey: fish, snakes, amphibians, crabs, and insects. As if hunting aquatic prey in the desert weren’t difficult enough, this male in Big Bend National Park in Texas had to cross an open patch of ground guarded fiercely by a Northern Mockingbird every time he made a food delivery to the nest. When he brought in a frog, he barely seemed to notice his brief passenger. —NICK DUNLOP

The Barn Owl’s diet is the most studied of any raptor species. Regurgitated after each meal, a pellet is a package of undigested bones, fur, feathers, or insect exoskeletons. Researchers can analyze them in extreme detail for information on prey species. —ROB PALMER.

Typical of falcons, Peregrines have the long slender toes so effective in striking and grabbing birds in the air. They prey on over three hundred species of birds in North America, up to the size of the Canada Goose and Sandhill Crane, but mostly stick to smaller birds that they can carry. —ROB PALMER