This book investigates all aspects of Peregrine Falcon life, from plumage, through diet, breeding and survival. The falcons breed on all continents apart from Antarctica and data has been collected from across that vast range. In addition, modern technology has been used to study the flights which have made the falcon famous as arguable the fastest creature on the planet. Allied to excellent photography the result is a comprehensive book on this most iconic bird.
In the second half of the last century the need to increase food production led to the widescale application of chemicals on farmland. But the chemicals had a disastrous effect on Peregrine Falcons, causing both the breaking of eggshells and the killing of adult birds. Everywhere the chemicals were used the Peregrine population fell sharply: in some areas the falcons were extirpated. Alerted by both amateur and professional rnithologists to an impending catastrophe, governments banned the chemicals. Slowly the Peregrine population began to rise, in part prompted by the bird’s remarkable ability to adapt. In parts of its range the falcon realised that buildings could be utilised as make-shift cliffs for breeding. And where humans congregated, pigeons flourished. That combination of potential breeding sites and high densities of a preferred prey meant an increase in urban living for the resourceful Peregrine, and numbers climbed steadily. The falcons’ arrival in town increased human interest. Nestboxes were provided and video cameras were installed to watch Peregrine family life. Added to its fabulous flying abilities and renowned speed, the falcon that had once been seen only by those who sought it out in remote, wild places, became a star of local CCTV.
Introduction
1. The Falcons 10
2. The Peregrine Falcon 34
3. Flight Characteristics: Flight, Hunting Techniques and Strategies 92
4. Diet 162
5. Food Consumption and Energy Balance 246
6. Breeding Part 1: Pair Formation to Nest Sites 256
7. Breeding Part 2: Eggs to Fledglings 292
8. Movements and Winter Grounds 364
9. Friends and Foes 394
10. Population: Survival and Population Numbers 416
References 492
Index 526
Richard Sale is a physicist with a PhD in astrophysics, who now devotes his time to studying the three small UK breeding falcons and their flight dynamics. He has written several books on birds. The Gyrfalcon (co-authored with Russian friend Eugene Potapov) won the US Wildlife Society Book of the Year in 2006. More recently he co-authored Steller’s Sea Eagle with Russian colleagues Vladimir Masterov and Michael Romanov: the book won the US Wildlife Society Book of the Year in 2019. In 2021 Sale became the first author to win the Wildlife Society’s book award prize three times with his monograph on The Common Kestrel. His other books include The Snowy Owl (also with Eugene Potapov), the New Naturalist title Falcons, a monograph on Merlin, and The Eurasian Hobby (with Anthony Messenger).
Steve Watson is a retired Chartered Accountant who has always had a passion for raptors but Peregrine Falcons in particular. He is a Trustee of Gloucestershire Raptor Monitoring Group CIO(GRMG) and Raptor Aid CIO and also a committee member of South West Peregrines. He has
conducted a 40-year study of the Symonds Yat, Gloucestershire, England Peregrines, whilst also presenting lectures throughout the UK. He has read widely on the subject, being motivated by an insatiable desire to attain a full understanding of all aspects of this most charismatic of birds.
"This is a monumental book about what is regarded as the fastest animal on the planet (or flying over it). At over 500 pages, and amply and attractively illustrated, this is a tribute to and reference source about a marvellous bird. The brilliance of this bird is well captured in many of the photographs but the text is full of information about Peregrines from everywhere in the world where they occur.
Chapters cover falcons in general, an introduction to this species, flight, diet, breeding behaviours and characteristics, movements, friends and foes and population numbers and trends. It feels like an encyclopedic coverage and the book is packed with information, but information delivered in a very palatable form.
I am a fan of this species but I can’t say I want to know everything about it – although if the time comes when I do, I’ll know to look here – but the book is a good read. As a biologist, rather than as a raptor fan, I enjoyed reading the account of sexual dimorphism in size of this species (and many other raptors, but not a great many other species of bird) and found the explanation of competing explanations for the phenomenon to be very good.
I’ve often seen figures for percentage success of attacks on prey for this species, and for other raptors, and, even in my experience of the birds in the field, have wondered quite how observers decide what is a serious attempt at a kill and what amounts to a test or just larking about. I remember watching a Peregrine on Speyside, something like 50 years ago, chasing a Swift around and it looked like it was playing. Now, whether or not it could really have been described in that way, it would have been questionable as to how many, if any, attempts were real ones.
The chapter on friends and foes was very interesting, and covers the species’s interactions with other birds and mammals, some of which is fascinating. Ten pages in the Population chapter are devoted to human persecution of Peregrines in the UK, much of it on areas managed for grouse shooting. I was unaware of the 2011 paper by McMillan in Scottish Birds and I am now very keen to read it. But the discussion ranges widely over the studies and, no surprise here, comes firmly to the view that deliberate and systematic illegal killing of protected wildlife is rife on grouse moors.
This is a phenomenal piece of work, from which 10% of the sales income will be donated to Raptor Aid.
The cover? Interesting choice – I’d give it 7/10."
– Mark Avery
"Like me, you may be a devotee of Derek Ratcliffe’s ground-breaking The Peregrine Falcon, Poyser, 1980 and 1993 (2nd ed). Trust me, however. If you’re in at all interested in the world’s most successful avian predator, you’ll need this astonishing work. Even Derek would have wanted it. It is the most beautifully illustrated, last word on the beast.
There is barely a feather’s weight of peregrine information that has been left out. The text on the diet alone, which is possibly among the widest in any raptor, runs to 80 pages. Of special note is the way that the authors take to task all the many exaggerated claims about peregrine speed. Their reassessment is a model of meticulous exposition.
Yet the thing I love most is the way the hard science, undergirded by the clearest and boldest sets of graphics or pie-charts I’ve ever seen, works in conjunction with the photographs to create an integrated, informational and aesthetic whole. It is truly magnificent. The images, in fact – 150 in total, packed with all sort of insights and details in their own right – are worth the cover price by themselves.
Instantly it upgrades peregrine scholarship. It will be consulted for decades. It has a bibliography that runs to 32 close-typed pages and I was rather excited to find myself in its list. Not for anything I might have said in the 700,00 words of Birds Britannica or Birds and People. But because in 2007 and long forgotten by its author – but grist to the mill for these peregrine afficionados – I wrote a one-page note on a hunting bird assailed by cheeky crows. Of course, they wouldn’t miss it. And so fame at last!"
– Mark Cocker