Peregrine Falcon

About the Peregrine Falcon

The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest animal on Earth, and it looks the part - a big, broad-shouldered falcon, slate blue-gray above and finely barred below, with a bold black helmet and thick dark mustache framing a pale cheek. In flight the wings are long, pointed, and sharply flexed, and the whole bird reads as pure power.

Peregrines hunt other birds on the wing, climbing high above their quarry and folding into a stoop that has been clocked at more than 200 miles per hour, striking the prey with clenched feet in a puff of feathers. They nest on ledges - sea cliffs, canyon walls, and, since their recovery, the artificial cliffs of skyscrapers and bridges - and pairs defend those eyries with fierce, screaming dives.

In Texas the Peregrine has two lives: a small, prized population breeds on the remote cliffs of the Trans-Pecos mountains, and far larger numbers pass through in migration, when the Texas coast hosts one of the greatest peregrine flights on the continent, with wintering birds lingering around reservoirs, coastal flats, and city towers. Nearly wiped out by DDT by the 1970s, the species' comeback is one of conservation's defining success stories.