Peregrine Falcon

The Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus), also known simply as the Peregrine,[2] and historically also as "Duck Hawk" in North America,[3] is a cosmopolitan bird of prey in the family Falconidae. It is a medium to large-sized falcon, females being larger and about the size of a large crow,[4][5] with a blue-gray back, barred white underside, and a black head and "mustache". There are seventeen described subspecies, which vary in appearance and range.

The breeding range includes the Arctic tundra, through Europe, and North America, and south into Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands and Australia. Essentially, this species can be found everywhere on Earth, except in the polar regions, on very high mountains, in deserts, and most tropical rainforests making it one of the world's most widespread falcons (though only as a winter visitor in some areas). The only major ice-free landmass from where it is entirely absent is New Zealand. Both the English and scientific names of this species mean "wandering falcon" and refer to the species' wide range and its highly migratory habits.

It feeds almost exclusively on medium sized birds, but will very rarely hunt small mammals. It reaches sexual maturity at two or three years of age, and mates for life. It nests in a scrape, normally on cliff edges or, occasionally, tall man-made structures.[6] The Peregrine Falcon became an endangered species due to the overuse of pesticides such as DDT. Subsequently, wildlife services around the world bred the species in captivity, and the use of DDT ceased; with this the Peregrine Falcon has since made a recovery.[7]

Description

The Peregrine Falcon has a body length of 34–50 cm (13–20 in) and a wingspan of around 80–120 cm (31–47 in).[4] The male and female have similar markings and plumage, but as usual in birds of prey the Peregrine Falcon displays marked sexual dimorphism in size, with the female measuring up to 30 percent larger than the male.[8] Males weigh 440–750 g, and the noticeably larger females weigh 910–1500 g; for variation in weight between subspecies, see under that section below.[5]

The back and the long and pointed wings of the adult are usually bluish black to slate grey with indistinct darker barring (see "Subspecies" below); the wingtips are black.[9] The underparts are white to rusty and barred with thin clean bands of dark brown or black.[10] The tail, colored 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 "mustache" along the cheeks are black, contrasting sharply with the pale sides of the neck and white throat.[11] The cere is yellow, as are the feet, and the beak and claws are black.[12] The upper beak is notched near the tip, an adaptation which enables falcons to kill prey by severing the spinal column at the neck.[13][14] The immature bird is much browner with streaked, rather than barred, underparts, and has a pale bluish cere.[14]

Taxonomy and systematics

The scientific name Falco peregrinus, means "wandering falcon" in Latin.[15] Indeed, the species' common name refers to its wide-ranging flights in most European languages.[16] The Latin term for falcon, falco, is related to falx, the Latin word meaning sickle, in reference to the silhouette of the falcon's long, pointed wings in flight.

The Peregrine Falcon belongs to a lineage of its genus which also includes the hierofalcons[17] and the Prairie Falcon (F. mexicanus). This lineage probably diverged from other falcons as part of a general diversification of the genus at the end of the Late Miocene or in the Early Pliocene, about 8–5 million years ago (mya). As the Peregrine-hierofalcon group includes both Old World and North American species, it is likely that the lineage originated in western Eurasia or Africa. Its relationship to other falcons is not clear; the issue is complicated by widespread hybridization confounding mtDNA sequence analyses; for example a genetic lineage of the Saker Falcon (F. cherrug) is known[18] which originated from a male Saker producing fertile young with a female Peregrine ancestor some 100,000 years ago.[ref] Today, Peregrines are occasionally hybridized with other species such as the Lanner Falcon (F. biarmicus) to produce the "perilanner", a somewhat popular bird in falconry as it combines the Peregrine's hunting skill with the Lanner's hardiness, or the Gyrfalcon to produce large, strikingly-colored birds for experienced falconers. As can be seen, the Peregrine is still genetically close to the hierofalcons, though their lineages diverged in the Late Pliocene (maybe some 2.5–2 mya in the Gelasian).

Fossil remains of a hierofalcon-like large Falco are known from the Early Pliocene of Bulgaria to the Early Pleistocene of southern and central Europe. Given the large range in time and that the fossil history of the Peregrine Falcon complex is documented since the Early Pleistocene, it might be more than one species. The remains straddle the proposed divergence point of the Peregrine complex and the hierofalcons in time and are geographically close to the region where the split presumably occurred (the general region of North Africa or the Mediterranean basin).[20] The specimens are fully fossilized, making them useless for molecular biological studies. Time and place strongly indicate that these bones belong to a bird very close to if not actually the common ancestor to the Peregrine Falcon complex and the hierofalcons, and/or an early representative of either lineage. The ecological niche for large falcons is, at least today, generally not sufficient to permit more than two species to exist in any one locality, and given that this applies in all habitats, it is likely that this was so during the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary regardless the different climate and associated habitat distribution at that time.

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