The wandering falcon that nested on skyscrapers
The peregrine falcon is the most widespread bird of prey on Earth, breeding from Arctic tundra to the tropics and absent from just one major ice-free landmass, New Zealand. Its name means wandering falcon, and today many peregrines nest on skyscrapers instead of cliffs.
Females outweigh males markedly, as is usual among bird-hunting raptors: males weigh roughly 330 grams to a kilogram and females 700 to 1,500 grams. Both sexes share slate-grey backs, black wingtips, pale underparts crossed by thin dark bars and a black cap with a moustache-like stripe down the cheeks. A 2021 study of photographs from around the globe found that this cheek stripe is bigger where sunlight is stronger, suggesting it cuts glare. Australians once called the bird the black-cheeked falcon and North Americans the duck hawk.
Its prey is almost entirely medium-sized birds, though small mammals, reptiles and insects are taken occasionally. Peregrines breed from their first year, pair for life and lay eggs in a bare scrape on a cliff ledge or, increasingly, a tall building, where city pigeons and ducks provide food. Pesticides, above all DDT, pushed the species into danger across much of its range, but numbers rebounded after DDT was banned in the early 1970s.
Marmaduke Tunstall gave the bird its current scientific name in 1771, though Albertus Magnus had used the Latin phrase as early as 1225. Peregrinus means one from abroad, probably because falconers caught young birds on migration instead of raiding hard-to-reach nests. The peregrine’s lineage, which also includes the hierofalcons and the prairie falcon, split from other falcons about 3 to 8 million years ago, likely in western Eurasia or Africa.
Authorities accept 18 or 19 subspecies, depending on whether the Barbary falcon counts. They include the American duck hawk of the Rocky Mountains, the non-migratory Mediterranean race sometimes called the Maltese falcon, and a fully migratory Siberian form that winters as far away as sub-Saharan Africa. Falconers value the species for its trainability and power against game birds large and small.
Source: Peregrine falcon
