Peregrine falcon

Peregrine falcon

The peregrine falcon has a blue-grey back, barred white underparts, and a black head. Experts recognize 17 to 19 subspecies, which vary in appearance and range. It is a well-respected falconry bird due to its strong hunting ability, high trainability, versatility, and availability via captive breeding.

About Peregrine falcon in brief

Summary Peregrine falconThe peregrine falcon is a widespread bird of prey in the family Falconidae. It has a blue-grey back, barred white underparts, and a black head. It can be found nearly everywhere on Earth, except extreme polar regions, very high mountains, and most tropical rainforests. Experts recognize 17 to 19 subspecies, which vary in appearance and range. It is a well-respected falconry bird due to its strong hunting ability, high trainability, versatility, and availability via captive breeding. Its diet consists almost exclusively of medium-sized birds, but it will occasionally hunt small mammals, small reptiles, or even insects. Reaching sexual maturity at one year, it mates for life and nests in a scrape, normally on cliff edges or, in recent times, on tall human-made structures. It became an endangered species in many areas because of the widespread use of certain pesticides, especially DDT. Since the ban on DDT from the early 1970s, populations have recovered, supported by large-scale protection of nesting places and releases to the wild. In most subspecies,. males weigh less than 700 g and females weigh more than 800 g, with cases of females weighing about 50% more than their male breeding mates not uncommon. The back and the wings are usually bluish black to black to indistinct darker barring ; the wingtips are black. The tail, coloured like the back, is long, narrow, and rounded at the end with a black tip and a white band at the very end.

The upper claws are not killched, which enables the falcons to kill near kill. The cere is yellow, yellow, and white as the neck and throat and the throat are white and pale. The underside of the head is sharply contrasting with the pale sides of the cheeks, with the cheeks are black and a contrasting black and white band along the top and a very black and very white band on the head. The pereGrine is renowned for its speed, reaching over 320 kmh during its characteristic hunting stoop, making it the fastest bird in the world, as well as the fastest member of the animal kingdom. The male and female have similar markings and plumage, but as in many birds of prey the pere Grines display marked sexual dimorphism in size,. with the female measuring up to 30% larger than the male. The two species’ divergence is relatively recent, during the time of the last ice age, therefore the genetic differential between them is relatively tiny. They are only about 0. 6–0. 8% genetically differentiated. The adult are usually white to black with the underparts are barred with thin bands of clean bands of white. The legs are dark brown or black, like the tail, and the claws are black or black as the feet, and beak is not kill to beak and the end of the tail is rounded. The body length is 34 to 58 cm and a wingspan from 74 to 120 cm.