Scientific name: Falco peregrinus
The back and the long pointed wings of the adult are usually bluish black to slate grey with indistinct darker barring (see "Subspecies" below); the wingtips are black. The white to rusty underparts are barred with thin clean bands of dark brown or black. The tail, coloured like the back but with thin clean bars, is long, narrow, and rounded at the end with a black tip and a white band at the very end. The top of the head and a "moustache" along the cheeks are black, contrasting sharply with the pale sides of the neck and white throat. The cere is yellow, as are the feet, and the beak and claws are black. The upper beak is notched near the tip, an adaptation which enables falcons to kill prey by severing the spinal column at the neck. The immature bird is much browner with streaked, rather than barred, underparts, and has a pale bluish cere and orbital ring.
It can be found in every continent of the world excluding Antarctica, with some sub-species that are resident and with others that are migratory.
In southern Africa it is generally uncommon and localised in Namibia, northern and eastern Botswana, Zimbabwe, western Mozambique and South Africa. It generally favours riverine, mountainous or coastal environments, especially with high cliffs, used for roosting and hunting. Dam walls, quarries and the tall buildings of city centres can also fulfil this purpose.
It eats mainly birds, supplemented with bats and flying insects, catching all of its prey aerially. It does most of its hunting in the vicinity of a cliff or another tall structure, either hunting from a perch near the top or from high up in the air, so that it can single out an individual; once it has done so it dives almost vertically and, due to its aerodynamic shape, can attain speeds of over 300km/hr! It strikes its prey with its talons at this speed (killing it instantly), or if it misses it may give pursuit for over two kilometres before returning to a perch to feed, if the hunt was successful. It sometimes flies close to the cliff face to flush birds and then chase them, and it may even rob the nests of cliff-nesting birds. On the whole about a quarter of its hunts are successful, based on two different South African studies.
Near-threatened in South Africa.
