Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus): Speed, Facts and Habitat

Appearance: how to recognize a peregrine falcon

Adult peregrines are blue-gray to slate-gray above, with a darker, almost black head. The most striking feature is a thick black “moustache,” or malar stripe, running down from each eye across a white cheek. A 2021 study of photos from around the world found that this stripe is broader in sunnier regions, which supports the idea that it reduces glare, much like the black paint athletes wear under their eyes.

The underparts are white to pale cream or rusty, finely barred with dark bars on the belly and thighs. The eye is dark brown, surrounded by a ring of bare yellow skin, and the feet and cere (the soft skin at the base of the bill) are bright yellow.

Young birds in their first year look quite different. They are brown above and buff below, with heavy vertical streaks instead of bars, and a bluish cere. In flight, peregrines of all ages show long, pointed wings and a fairly short tail, giving them an anchor-like shape. The flight is powerful, with stiff, shallow wingbeats from the wingtips.

How big is a peregrine falcon?

Peregrines are medium-sized falcons, roughly the size of an American crow or a carrion crow. Like most birds of prey, they show reversed size dimorphism: the female is larger than the male, often by about a third in weight. Falconers traditionally call the male a “tiercel,” from an old word for a third, because he is about a third smaller.

Size varies a lot across the 18 or 19 recognized subspecies. The largest is Peale’s falcon of the North Pacific coast, where females can weigh 1.5 kg (3.3 lb). The smallest is the African subspecies F. p. minor, whose males can weigh as little as about 300 g (11 oz).

How fast is a peregrine falcon?

The peregrine’s speed comes from its stoop, a steep, wings-folded dive from high above its prey. Dive speeds of more than 300 km/h (186 mph) are widely reported, and a trained falcon named Frightful, diving alongside skydiving falconer Ken Franklin, was clocked at about 389 km/h (242 mph). Wild peregrines usually dive more slowly, because they rarely start from such great heights. Even so, no other animal is known to move faster.

In level, flapping flight the peregrine is far slower, typically around 65–90 km/h (40–56 mph), with faster bursts during a chase. Several adaptations make the stoop possible: a streamlined, teardrop body shape, stiff and narrow wing feathers, small bony knobs (tubercles) in the nostrils that are thought to slow the rush of air into the lungs, and a clear third eyelid (nictitating membrane) that sweeps the eye clean without blocking vision. Our article how fast can a peregrine falcon fly? covers the records and the physics in detail, and the fastest animals list compares it with the cheetah, swifts and sailfish.

Habitat and range

The peregrine is the most widespread bird of prey in the world. It breeds from Greenland and the Arctic tundra to South Africa, southern Australia and Tierra del Fuego. The only large ice-free landmass where it is completely absent is New Zealand. It also avoids extreme polar regions, very high mountains and the interior of dense tropical rainforest.

The key requirement is open space for hunting and a safe, high ledge for nesting. Classic peregrine habitat includes sea cliffs, inland crags, river gorges, mountain valleys and coastal marshes. In the Arctic, birds may nest on low rocky slopes or even mounds. In parts of Australia and the Pacific Northwest they use tree hollows, and in Europe they once nested in the old nests of ravens and other large birds.

Since the 1980s, peregrines have moved into towns and cities in large numbers. Skyscrapers, cathedrals, bridges, power station chimneys and church spires copy the cliffs they evolved on, and cities supply plenty of pigeons. See why do peregrine falcons live in cities? for the full story.

The name “peregrine” means “wanderer” in Latin. It refers to the long migrations of northern populations. Peregrines breeding on Arctic tundra in North America and Siberia fly south for the winter, some reaching Argentina, southern Africa or South Asia, while most birds in temperate and tropical regions stay near their territories all year.

Diet and hunting

Peregrines are specialist bird hunters. Worldwide, an estimated 1,500–2,000 bird species, roughly a fifth of all bird species, are recorded as their prey somewhere, and more than 300 in North America alone. Prey ranges from 3 g (0.1 oz) hummingbirds to a 3.1 kg (6.8 lb) sandhill crane, but most victims weigh between about 20 g (0.7 oz) and 1.1 kg (2.4 lb). Typical prey includes pigeons and doves, ducks, shorebirds, gulls, starlings, thrushes, jays and other songbirds.

In cities, feral pigeons, the domestic form of the rock pigeon, can make up 80% or more of the diet. Peregrines also catch bats at dusk and occasionally take lemmings, voles, young rabbits and other small mammals, especially in the Arctic.

A hunting peregrine watches from a high perch or circles high in the sky. When it spots a bird flying in the open below, it folds its wings and drops into a stoop, then strikes the prey with its clenched feet, stunning or killing it on impact. It then turns to catch the falling bird in midair or follows it to the ground. Like other falcons, it finishes prey with a bite to the neck, using a notch on the upper bill called the tomial tooth. More detail is in what do peregrine falcons eat?.

Reproduction and life cycle

Peregrines usually first breed at two or three years old, although some breed at one. Pairs usually mate for life and return to the same territory year after year. Courtship includes spectacular aerial displays, and the male passes food to the female in flight, sometimes while she flips upside down to take it from his talons.

Peregrines do not build a nest. The female scrapes a shallow hollow, called a scrape, in loose gravel or soil on a ledge, usually under an overhang. In the Northern Hemisphere most eggs are laid in late winter or spring, later in the Arctic, and in the Southern Hemisphere mainly from July to October.

• Clutch: usually 3–4 eggs (range 1–5), cream to buff with heavy red-brown markings.
• Incubation: 29–33 days, mostly by the female; the male helps by day.
• Fledging: chicks, called eyases, fly at about 42–46 days old.
• Independence: the young depend on their parents for up to two months after fledging while they learn to hunt.

On average only about 1.5 young fledge per nest. Both parents hunt for the brood, sometimes ranging 19–24 km (12–15 mi) from the nest.

Lifespan, predators and threats

Life is hardest in the first year: an estimated 59–70% of young peregrines die before their first birthday, mostly from starvation, accidents and predators. Adults survive much better, with about 25–32% dying each year. Banded wild birds have lived to nearly 20 years, and captive peregrines have reached about 25 years.

Adult peregrines have few natural predators. Great horned owls in North America and Eurasian eagle-owls in Europe kill nestlings, fledglings and occasionally adults at night, and golden eagles and gyrfalcons can also take them. Peregrines fiercely defend their nests and have been known to knock even eagles out of the sky with a full stoop.

Human-related threats today include collisions with windows, wires and vehicles, illegal persecution and egg theft in some regions, and pollutants such as lead and mercury that build up through the food chain.

Conservation status: from DDT crash to recovery

The peregrine falcon is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessed in 2021). That is a remarkable turnaround. In the 1950s–1970s, organochlorine pesticides, above all DDT, built up in the birds that peregrines eat and then in the falcons themselves. The chemicals made females lay thin-shelled eggs that broke during incubation, and breeding success collapsed.

The species vanished as a breeding bird from the eastern United States and parts of Europe, including Belgium, and declined sharply almost everywhere else. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that North America had only about 324 nesting pairs left in 1975.

Recovery came from three steps: the US ban on most uses of DDT in 1972 and similar bans elsewhere, legal protection of the birds and their nests, and large-scale captive breeding. The Peregrine Fund and partner groups released thousands of young falcons using “hacking,” in which chicks are raised in boxes on towers, cliffs or buildings and fed without seeing humans until they can hunt alone. The peregrine was removed from the US endangered species list on 25 August 1999, Canada declared it no longer at risk in 2017, and populations across Europe have returned to or above historic levels in many countries.

Peregrines and people

Peregrines have been prized by falconers for more than 3,000 years, and medieval European nobility ranked the bird just below the gyrfalcon. In North America it was once called the “duck hawk.” Today trained peregrines are used at some airports and landfills to scare away flocks of birds.

The species is also a city celebrity. Nest cameras on cathedrals, office towers and university buildings in cities such as London, Derby, Norwich, New York and Melbourne are watched by thousands of people each spring. The peregrine is the official city bird of Chicago, and it appears on the 2007 Idaho state quarter.

Myths and facts

• Myth: the peregrine is the fastest bird in level flight. Its record speeds come only from steep dives. In flapping, level flight it is no faster than many other strong fliers, and the best-measured level-flight record belongs to the common swift.
• Myth: peregrines hit prey with their chest. They strike with clenched feet, often raking or knocking the prey out of the air, and then kill it with a bite to the neck.
• Myth: the peregrine is still an endangered species. It was endangered across much of its range in the 1970s, but it has recovered so well that it is now listed as Least Concern worldwide.
• Fact: falcons are not close relatives of hawks. DNA studies show that falcons are more closely related to parrots and songbirds than to hawks and eagles. See falcon vs hawk.