Falcon facts for kids

This article is about Falcon (disambiguation). For Falcons (disambiguation), see Falcon (disambiguation).

Quick facts for kids Falcon Temporal range: Late Miocene to present

Brown falcon (Falco berigora) in Victoria, Australia
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Falconiformes
Family:	Falconidae
Subfamily:	Falconinae
Genus:	*Falco* Linnaeus, 1758
Type species
Falco subbuteo (Eurasian hobby) Linnaeus, 1758
Species
38; see text.
Synonyms
Aesalon Lithofalco Tinnunculus Linnaeus, 1766 Hierofalco Cuvier, 1817 Cerchneis Boie, 1826 Hypotriorchis Boie, 1826 Rhynchodon Nitzsch, 1829 Ieracidea Gould, 1838 Hieracidea Strickland, 1841 (unjustified emendation) Gennaia Kaup, 1847 Jerafalco Kaup, 1850 (unjustified emendation) Harpe Bonaparte, 1855 (non Lacepède 1802: preoccupied) Dissodectes Sclater, 1864 Genaïe Heuglin, 1867 (unjustified emendation) Harpa Sharpe, 1874 (non Pallas 1774: preoccupied) Gennadas Heine & Reichenow, 1890 (unjustified emendation) Nesierax Oberholser, 1899 Nesihierax Dubois, 1902 (unjustified emendation) Asturaetus De Vis, 1906 (non Asturaetos Brehm 1855: preoccupied) Plioaetus Richmond, 1908 Sushkinia Tugarinov, 1935 (non Martynov 1930: preoccupied) – see below

Falcons are small birds of prey and are related to hawks and eagles. They usually have pointed wings and long tails.

In some countries falcons are used in falconry. This means people catch the birds and make them hunt for them. Long ago this was a way for people to get more food but today it is a sport.

Taxonomy
Vision and speed
Habitat
Diet
Winter larder
See also

Taxonomy

The genus Falco was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. The type species is the Merlin (Falco columbarius). The genus name Falco is Late Latin meaning a "falcon" from falx, falcis, meaning "a sickle", referring to the claws of the bird. In Middle English and Old French, the title faucon refers generically to several captive raptor species.

Adult falcons have thin, tapered wings, which enable them to fly at high speed and change direction rapidly. Fledgling falcons, in their first year of flying, have longer flight feathers, which make their configuration more like that of a general-purpose bird such as a broad wing. This makes flying easier while learning the exceptional skills required to be effective hunters as adults. Like hawks, most falcons have dark gray or brown backs and wings, with white undersides.

The falcons are the largest genus in the Falconinae subfamily of Falconidae, which itself also includes another subfamily comprising caracaras and a few other species. All these birds kill with their beaks, using a tomial "tooth" on the side of their beaks—unlike the hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey in the Accipitridae, which use their feet.

The largest falcon is the gyrfalcon at up to 65 cm in length. The smallest falcon species is the Pygmy falcon which measures just 20 cm. As with hawks and owls, falcons exhibit sexual dimorphism, with the females typically larger than the males, thus allowing a wider range of prey species.

Some small falcons with long, narrow wings are called "hobbies" and some which hover while hunting are called "kestrels".

Compared to other birds of prey, the fossil record of the falcons is not well distributed in time. The oldest fossils tentatively assigned to this genus are from the Late Miocene, less than 10 million years ago. Falcons are not closely related to other birds of prey, and their nearest relatives are parrots and songbirds.

Vision and speed

As is the case with many birds of prey, falcons have exceptional powers of vision; the visual acuity of one species has been measured at 2.6 times that of a normal human. Peregrine falcons have been recorded diving at speeds of 320 km/h (200 mph), making them the fastest-moving creatures on Earth; the fastest recorded dive attained a vertical speed of 390 km/h (240 mph).

Habitat

The peregrine falcon is found over most of the world and is famous for hunting birds by diving down on them at 320 km/h (200 mi/h). It was nearly wiped out in North America by the use of pesticides, but has since made a recovery.

Falcons are birds of prey in the genus Falco, which includes about 40 species. Falcons are widely distributed on all continents of the world except Antarctica, though closely related raptors did occur there in the Eocene.

Diet

Most falcons eat small mammals that they hunt using eyesight, although some species hunt other birds, which they take in flight.

Winter larder

On the Moroccan island of Mogador, falcons seem to imprison small birds by trapping them in crevasses, presumably saving them to eat later.

Mogador has the ruins of a fortress, a mosque and a prison. Today the island is a nature reserve, where Eleonora’s falcons nest among the ruins. They hunt migrating warblers, hoopoes and other birds. Researchers came across small birds trapped in deep cavities, their flight and tail feathers removed. The birds were unable to move their wings or use their dangling legs.

Eleonora’s falcons have been seen building up larders of up to 20 dead birds during migration season, when prey is plentiful. But "storing snacks that are still alive could be a unique behaviour," said an expert.

Overview

Falcons are roughly divisible into three or four groups. The first contains the kestrels (probably excepting the American kestrel); usually small and stocky falcons of mainly brown upperside colour and sometimes sexually dimorphic; three African species that are generally gray in colour stand apart from the typical members of this group. Kestrels feed chiefly on terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates of appropriate size, such as rodents, reptiles, or insects.

The second group contains slightly larger (on average) species, the hobbies and relatives. These birds are characterized by considerable amounts of dark slate-gray in their plumage; their malar areas are nearly always black. They feed mainly on smaller birds.

Third are the peregrine falcon and its relatives, variably sized powerful birds that also have a black malar area (except some very light color morphs), and often a black cap, as well. They are very fast birds with a maximum speed of 390 kilometres per hour. Otherwise, they are somewhat intermediate between the other groups, being chiefly medium grey with some lighter or brownish colours on their upper sides. They are, on average, more delicately patterned than the hobbies and, if the hierofalcons are excluded (see below), this group typically contains species with horizontal barring on their undersides. As opposed to the other groups, where tail colour varies much in general but little according to evolutionary relatedness, However, the fox and greater kestrels can be told apart at first glance by their tail colours, but not by much else; they might be very close relatives and are probably much closer to each other than the lesser and common kestrels. The tails of the large falcons are quite uniformly dark grey with inconspicuous black banding and small, white tips, though this is probably plesiomorphic. These large Falco species feed on mid-sized birds and terrestrial vertebrates.

Very similar to these, and sometimes included therein, are the four or so species of hierofalcons (literally, "hawk-falcons"). They represent taxa with, usually, more phaeomelanins, which impart reddish or brown colors, and generally more strongly patterned plumage reminiscent of hawks. Their undersides have a lengthwise pattern of blotches, lines, or arrowhead marks.

While these three or four groups, loosely circumscribed, are an informal arrangement, they probably contain several distinct clades in their entirety.

Species

The sequence follows the taxonomic order of White et al. (1996), except for adjustments in the kestrel sequence.

Common name	Scientific name	Distribution
Malagasy kestrel	Falco newtoni	Madagascar, Mayotte, and the Comores.
Seychelles kestrel	Falco araeus	Seychelles Islands
Mauritius kestrel	Falco punctatus	Mauritius
Spotted kestrel	Falco moluccensis	Wallacea and Java
Nankeen kestrel or Australian kestrel	Falco cenchroides	Australia and New Guinea
Common kestrel	Falco tinnunculus	widespread in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as occasionally reaching the east coast of North America.
Rock kestrel	Falco rupicolus	northwestern Angola and southern Democratic Republic of Congo to southern Tanzania, and south to South Africa
Greater kestrel	Falco rupicoloides	Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, parts of Angola and Zambia and in much of South Africa
Fox kestrel	Falco alopex	south of the Sahara from Mali eastwards as far as Ethiopia and north-west Kenya. It occasionally wanders west to Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea and south to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Lesser kestrel	Falco naumanni	Afghanistan and Central Asia, to China and Mongolia.
Grey kestrel	Falco ardosiaceus	Ethiopia and western parts of Kenya and Tanzania
Dickinson's kestrel	Falco dickinsoni	Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi along with north-eastern South Africa
Banded kestrel	Falco zoniventris	Madagascar
Red-necked falcon	Falco chicquera	Africa, India
Red-footed falcon	Falco vespertinus	southern Russia and Ukraine
Amur falcon	Falco amurensis	south-eastern Siberia and Northern China
Eleonora's falcon	Falco eleonorae	Greece,Cyprus, the Canary Islands, Ibiza and off Spain, Italy, Croatia, Morocco and Algeria.
Sooty falcon	Falco concolor	northeastern Africa to the southern Persian Gulf region
American kestrel or "sparrow hawk"	Falco sparverius	central and western Alaska across northern Canada to Nova Scotia, and south throughout North America, into central Mexico and the Caribbean.
Aplomado falcon	Falco femoralis	northern Mexico and Trinidad locally to southern South America
Merlin or "pigeon hawk"	Falco columbarius	Eurasia, North Africa, North America
Bat falcon	Falco rufigularis	tropical Mexico, Central and South America, and Trinidad
Orange-breasted falcon	Falco deiroleucus	southern Mexico to northern Argentina.
Eurasian hobby	Falco subbuteo	Africa, Europe and Asia.
African hobby	Falco cuvierii	Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Oriental hobby	Falco severus	eastern Himalayas and ranges southwards through Indochina to Australasia
Australian hobby or little falcon	Falco longipennis	Australia
New Zealand falcon or Ngarangi or kārearea	Falco novaeseelandiae	New Zealand
Brown falcon	Falco berigora	Australia and New Guinea.
Grey falcon	Falco hypoleucos	Australia
Black falcon	Falco subniger	Australia.
Lanner falcon	Falco biarmicus	Africa, southeast Europe and just into Asia
Laggar falcon	Falco jugger	southeastern Iran, southeastern Afghanistan, Pakistan, through India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and northwestern Myanmar.
Saker falcon	Falco cherrug	Ethiopia, the Arabian peninsula, northern Pakistan and western China
Gyrfalcon	Falco rusticolus	eastern and western Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Iceland and Norway.
Prairie falcon	Falco mexicanus	western North America.
Peregrine falcon	Falco peregrinus	Cosmopolitan
Taita falcon	Falco fasciinucha	Kenya

Extinct species

Réunion kestrel, Falco duboisi – extinct (about 1700)

Fossil record

Falco medius (Late Miocene of Cherevichnyi, Ukraine)
?Falco sp. (Late Miocene of Idaho)
Falco sp. (Early Pliocene of Kansas)
Falco sp. (Early Pliocene of Bulgaria – Early Pleistocene of Spain and Czech Republic)
Falco oregonus (Early/Middle Pliocene of Fossil Lake, Oregon) – possibly not distinct from a living species
Falco umanskajae (Late Pliocene of Kryzhanovka, Ukraine) – includes "Falco odessanus", a nomen nudum
?Falco bakalovi (Late Pliocene of Varshets, Bulgaria)
Falco antiquus (Middle Pleistocene of Noailles, France and possibly Horvőlgy, Hungary)
Cuban kestrel, Falco kurochkini (Late Pleistocene/Holocene of Cuba, West Indies)
Falco chowi (China)
Falco bulgaricus (Late Miocene of Hadzhidimovo, Bulgaria)

Several more paleosubspecies of extant species also been described.