Rapunzel had it easy. On the barren Moroccan island of Mogador, falcons seem to imprison small birds by trapping them in crevasses, presumably saving them to eat later.

First inhabited in antiquity, Mogador hosts the ruins of a fortress, a mosque and a prison. Today the island is a nature reserve, where Eleonora’s falcons nest among the ruins and hunt migrating warblers, hoopoes and other birds.

In a census of the island’s falcons in 2014, Abdeljebbar Qninba of Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, and his colleagues came across small birds trapped in deep cavities, their flight and tail feathers removed. The birds were unable to move their wings or use their dangling legs, the team reported.


Crippling and imprisoning prey might be a means of keeping fresh food nearby, so parents can stay on the nest and still have snacks nearby to feed hungry offspring.

Living larder

Many animals cache food during times of plenty to prepare for leaner times. Owls pack away dead mice for winter, and Eleonora’s falcons have been seen building up larders of up to 20 dead birds during migration season, when prey is plentiful. But storing snacks that are still alive could be a unique behaviour.

“I haven’t heard of anything like it in [non-human] vertebrates,” says Theodore Stankowich at California State University in Long Beach. “Perhaps this innovation of simply immobilising prey prior to caching has caught on and spread through the population.”

“Given the right circumstances – prey availability and habitat for storing the prey – it is reasonable to see how this behaviour could evolve,” says Michael Steele at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.

However, both caution that the few observations made of these trapped birds so far isn’t enough to confirm that they are being held prisoner by the falcons.

Rob Simmons of the University of Cape Town in South Africa is sceptical. “I don’t believe a falcon has the cognitive ability to ‘store’ prey like this,” he says. “I think the birds’ prey may simply be escaping and finding refuge.” Raptors often start plucking their prey before they kill them, so the injured birds may simply be escapees.

Journal reference: Alauda, vol 83, p 149

Image credit: Abdeljebbar Qninba