48 Fun Facts About Peregrine Falcon

Why does a falconer slip a leather hood over a peregrine's head?

To keep it calm. A falcon reacts to almost everything it sees, so with its eyes covered it sits quietly on the fist until the falconer is ready to fly it.

Which sex of peregrine falcon is larger?

The female. She can weigh half as much again as her mate, and early in nesting she guards the chicks while the smaller male hunts for the whole family.

What is the peregrine's historical North American nickname?

Duck hawk. The American subspecies still carries the name in Latin as anatum, 'of ducks', and coastal peregrines really do knock ducks out of the air.

Peregrines live almost everywhere, yet they are entirely absent from which of these islands?

New Zealand. Its only falcon is the kārearea, a native forest hunter found nowhere else, while peregrines breed in Britain, Madagascar and Sri Lanka alike.

Both the English and scientific names of the peregrine mean what?

Wandering falcon. Latin peregrinus means 'coming from foreign parts', and the name may first have marked young birds caught on their travels instead of taken from the nest.

Which 1962 book warned America about the farm chemicals that were wiping out its peregrines?

Silent Spring. Rachel Carson's bestseller turned public opinion against blanket spraying, and within ten years the United States had banned the worst offender from its farms.

Which pesticide was chiefly responsible for the peregrine's collapse in the mid-20th century?

DDT. It built up in the falcons' bodies and thinned their eggshells until they cracked under the sitting parents, and by the late 1960s the bird had vanished from the eastern United States.

The peregrine's beak is notched near the tip so that it can do what?

Sever the spinal column of prey. Any bird still alive after capture is finished with a quick bite through the vertebrae of the neck.

A 2021 study concluded the black malar stripe under a peregrine's eye serves to do what?

Reduce glare. In photos from across the bird's range, the stripe was bigger wherever the sunlight is stronger, which should help it pinpoint agile prey in a bright sky.

Trained peregrines are flown at which sites to scare other birds away?

Airports. Their handlers fly them to frighten flocks away from the runways, cutting the risk of a bird colliding with an aircraft.

The word 'falcon' probably comes from the Latin for which farm tool?

Sickle. Latin falx, a curved blade, probably gave the bird its name, whether for its hooked talons and beak or for the sweep of its pointed wings in flight.

In 1530 Emperor Charles V gave the Knights Hospitaller which island for a yearly rent of one falcon?

Malta. The knights sent the bird to the emperor's viceroy in Sicily every year, and the peregrine of the Mediterranean is still known as the Maltese falcon.

What is the peregrine's characteristic high-speed hunting dive called?

A stoop. The falcon climbs high, folds its wings and drops like a stone at more than 200 mph, which makes it the fastest animal on Earth.

Bony tubercles in a peregrine's nostrils are thought to help it do what in a dive?

Breathe by deflecting the airflow. At 200 mph the rush of air might otherwise burst a bird's lungs, and the little baffles are thought to slow it at the nostril.

Peregrines protect their eyes during a dive using what?

Nictitating membranes. These third eyelids blink again and again during a dive, wiping away debris and spreading tears without the falcon losing sight of its target.

How do peregrine parents train their fledglings to hunt?

Drop prey for them to chase. Once the young can fly, the adults let go of a kill in the air, and the fledglings learn to snatch the falling meal before they hunt for themselves.

To clock his peregrine at 242 mph, falconer Ken Franklin did what alongside her?

Skydived from a plane. In 1999 he jumped with his falcon Frightful from about three miles up, with a tiny recording chip fastened to her tail feathers.

In courtship, how does a female peregrine collect a gift of prey from her mate?

Flying upside down beneath him. She rolls over in flight and takes the catch straight out of his talons, a pass the pair repeat through the nesting season.

What is a peregrine falcon chick called?

An eyas. A parent tears each kill into small pieces and passes them delicately to the eyases, which are ready to fly in about six weeks.

A peregrine pair returns year after year to the same nesting site, known as what?

An eyrie. The best sites pass from one generation to the next, and some have been occupied by successive pairs of falcons for hundreds of years.

How does a peregrine usually kill or stun its prey?

Strikes it with a clenched foot in mid-air. The blow stuns or kills outright, and the falcon swings back round to catch the tumbling bird before it reaches the ground.

Which mammals are the peregrine's most common night-time prey?

Bats. Peregrines snatch them out of the air like any small bird and may eat them on the wing, and a few falcons have been reported to specialise in them.

Where does a peregrine normally nest?

In a scrape on a cliff edge. Peregrines build no nest at all: the eggs lie in a shallow hollow scratched out of the soil or gravel of a high ledge.

Which owl is a notorious night-time killer of young peregrines in North America?

Great horned owl. It takes nestlings and fledglings in the dark, and it was a constant menace at the sites where captive-bred young were set free.

Peregrine pairs sometimes team up on difficult prey by doing what?

Taking turns to dive at it. One falcon swoops, then the other, so the quarry gets no rest until one of the pair makes the catch.

At what time of day do peregrines do most of their hunting?

At dawn and dusk. That is when the birds they chase are most active, though city peregrines have learned to keep striking after dark by the glow of the streets.

Before eating a bird it has caught, a peregrine usually does what?

Plucks its feathers. The kill is carried to a favourite perch and stripped first, and a mother plucks every meal before she feeds it to her chicks.

In falconry, the peregrine's habit of circling above the falconer until game is flushed is called what?

Waiting on. The falcon holds its height overhead until the game breaks cover, then dives on it faster than the quarry can fly.

Which bird is the favourite prey of peregrines that live in cities?

Pigeons. City flocks are a ready larder all year round, which is one reason peregrines have settled in towns around the world.

Whose 1972 ban on a notorious pesticide cleared the way for the peregrine's American comeback?

The Environmental Protection Agency. With the poison gone, thousands of captive-bred young were set free, and in 1999 the peregrine came off the endangered species list.

What is the technique of releasing captive-bred falcons by feeding them less until they hunt for themselves called?

Hacking. Chicks are housed and fed at the release site until they can fly, then the meals taper off so that they learn to hunt there and, with luck, return to breed nearby.

A peregrine is usually silent, but its harsh 'kack-kack-kack' is a sign of what?

An intruder near the nest. Both parents scream and dive at anything that strays too close to their young, even raptors far bigger than themselves.

Peregrines have adapted to cities by nesting on what?

Artificial light even lets them keep hunting into dusk when it would otherwise be too dark.

Which Egyptian god was often shown as a man with a falcon's head crowned by a solar disk?

Ra. The sun god took his falcon head, most likely a peregrine's or a lanner's, from his merger with the sky god Horus as Ra-Horakhty.

In medieval hunting-bird hierarchies, which bird ranked above the peregrine and was linked with kings?

The gyrfalcon. The big Arctic falcon was so rare and so hard to obtain that it was reserved for kings, which left the peregrine as the bird of princes.

The peregrine falcon is the official city bird of which US city?

Chicago. Its people chose the bird themselves in 1999, in a public vote with real ballot boxes set out around the city and some 42,000 ballots cast.

A peregrine falcon features on which US state's 2007 quarter?

Idaho. The state is home to The Peregrine Fund's World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, which bred and released more than 4,000 of the falcons.

Which film director has called J. A. Baker's The Peregrine a book everyone who makes films should read?

Werner Herzog. He says it is less a book about watching a bird than about becoming one: Baker trailed falcons through an Essex winter in prose Herzog ranks with Conrad's.

Which Suzuki superbike, launched in 1999, takes its name from the Japanese for peregrine falcon?

Hayabusa. The name was a statement of intent: the bike arrived claiming the title of the world's fastest production motorcycle.

A peregrine falcon is about the size of which familiar bird?

A crow. It weighs only about two pounds, yet it takes prey as big as geese and large gulls.

How does a young peregrine's plumage differ from an adult's?

Browner, with streaked underparts. The dark marks run down the breast instead of across it, so a watcher can pick out the year's young at a glance.

Newly hatched peregrine chicks look oddly out of proportion because which part of them is so large?

Their feet. The chicks hatch in white down on feet far too big for them, and grow into them within five or six weeks, by which time they are feathered and flying.

Peregrine falcons typically keep the same mate for which period?

For life. A pair returns to the same territory every spring, and the bond usually ends only when one bird dies or is driven off by a stronger rival.

What is a male peregrine falcon traditionally called?

A tiercel. The word goes back to the Latin for 'third', and one old theory has it that every third egg in a nest was believed to hatch a male.

The breeding programme that saved the American peregrine began in 1970 at which university?

Cornell University. Ornithologist Tom Cade founded The Peregrine Fund there to breed falcons for release, and Cornell-hatched chicks were soon being sent to sites as far away as Wisconsin.

What does a peregrine pair usually do if its eggs are lost early in the breeding season?

Lay a second clutch. It means another month of sitting before anything hatches, but it gives the pair a second chance to raise young that year.

Which university's teams have been the Falcons since 1927, with peregrine mascots named Freddie and Frieda?

Bowling Green State. The local paper's sports editor coined the name in 1927 to replace 'Normals' and 'Teachers', choosing the falcon as a small but powerful bird.

The subspecies F. p. peregrinator of South Asia is better known by what name?

The shaheen falcon. Shaheen comes from an old Persian word for 'kingly', and this small, dark race is also known as the black shaheen.