Peregrine Falcon – Duck Hawk

The Peregrine Falcon is also known as a duck hawk in North America.

Physical Characteristics

The Peregrine Falcon gets between 13 and 23 inches long with a wingspan of between 31 to 47 inches. The female and male are colored the same, but the female is larger by up to 30 percent. Males will weigh between .97 and 1.7 pounds and females will weigh between 2 to 3.3 pounds.

They both have blue-black, long and pointy wings and white or rust colored underparts with thin black or brown bands. Their tail is also long and is rounded at the end and has a black tip with a white band.

Their cere on the beak is yellow in color, as well as their feet. However, the claws and beak are black in color and the beak has a special notch on it that helps them to kill their prey when it is used to cut the spinal cord of their prey.

Young birds are browner and are streaked instead of having bands and their cere is blue and they have an orbital ring.

Habitat and Location

They live in North, South, and Central America.

Diet

The peregrine falcon eats such as pigeons and ducks, but will also eat bats, and rodents. Young birds may learn to hunt by chasing and eating large bugs and flying insects. They pursue their prey by flying at it and swooping down onto the prey to grab it in their claws.

Breeding Facts

They can breed at a year old and mate for life. They build their nests on cliff edges or sometimes on buildings. When a male and female go through their courtship, they fly a special mixture of dives, spirals and other fancy acrobatics. The male then gives the female food in mid air and she turns upside down to take it.

They are territorial and make their nests at least a kilometer away from the closest other pair of falcons. That way there is enough food for all.  The female lays her three to four white or buff colored eggs in a hollow she digs in the dirt in February or March in the North and the falcons in the south lay theirs in July and August. They take about a month to hatch and both parents sit on the eggs.

They don’t add anything to the bare nest hollow. Both parents guard the nest from predators that would eat the chicks like other birds of prey, herons or gulls or mammals like foxes, bears, wolves or wolverines. The baby birds are called eyases and they get their feathers in about six weeks. They need to be fed by the parents for about 8 weeks.

 

Peregrine Falcon – Duck Hawk – World Of Nature