Birds of Prey (Smith novel) is at war with England. Sir Francis Courteney and his son Hal attack ships of the Dutch East India Company off the coast of Africa. They are betrayed and Sir Francis is executed. Hal winds up working for Prester John. Film and TV rights to the book were bought by Corona Pictures but as of 2013 no adaptation has been filmed. Birds of Prey (Smith novel) Birds of Prey is a 1997 novel by Wilbur Smith set in the late 17th century. The novel was the first in the third sequence of the Courtney series of novels, and as of
Bird of prey and may be raised to an order of their own, Cathartiiformes. The secretary bird and/or osprey are sometimes listed as subfamilies of Acciptridae: Sagittariinae and Pandioninae, respectively. Australia's letter-winged kite is a member of the family Accipitridae, although it is a nocturnal bird. The nocturnal birds of prey – the owls – are classified separately as members of two extant families of the order Strigiformes: Below is a simplified phylogeny of Telluraves which is the clade where the birds of prey belong to along with passerines and several near-passerine lineages. The orders in bold text are birds of prey orders;