Animal · Germany, United Kingdom, United States
Peregrine falcon
Falco peregrinus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on Earth, but only when it folds its wings and drops out of the sky in a dive. In ordinary level flight it is far slower than that.
Picture credit: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Kytabu (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the peregrine falcon live?
Home: on cliffs, and on towers and bridges in cities.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, India.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 34–58 cm. It weighs about 0.9 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
In a stoop the falcon climbs high, tucks its wings against its body and falls almost straight down towards a bird flying below. A falconer called Ken Franklin measured 389 kilometres per hour on his trained falcon Frightful in 2005, and that is the figure Guinness World Records lists. Wild falcons are usually clocked more slowly, and in ordinary flapping flight a peregrine travels at about the speed of a car on a country road. Small bony knobs inside its nostrils help it breathe while the air rushes past, and a third, see-through eyelid wipes its eye clean during the fall. It hunts other birds, above all pigeons, and catches them in mid-air. It builds no real nest: the female simply scrapes a hollow on a rock ledge, and in many cities a church tower or a bridge does the job just as well. After pesticides such as DDT nearly wiped the species out in the twentieth century, bans and reintroductions brought it back.
Find it on the globe
Peregrine falcon is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is a peregrine falcon?
About the size of a crow, thirty-four to fifty-eight centimetres long. The female is clearly bigger and heavier than the male, which is unusual among birds.
Where do peregrine falcons live?
On every continent except Antarctica, which makes them the most widespread bird of prey in the world. They nest on cliffs and, in cities, on church towers, bridges and high ledges.
Is the peregrine really the fastest animal?
In a dive, yes: 389 kilometres per hour was measured on a trained falcon in 2005. But that speed comes from falling, not from flapping; flying straight ahead it manages only around sixty to a hundred kilometres per hour.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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