RAIN

Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus Tunstall,1771

Status: Lower risk

Population Trend: Stable.

Other Names: American Duck Hawk (anatum), Arctic Peregrine Falcon (tundrius), Barbary Falcon, Black-cheeked Falcon (macropus), Black Shaheen (peregrinator), Cassins’ Peregrine Falcon (cassini), Duck Hawk (anatum), Peale’s Falcon (pealei), Peregrine, Red-capped Falcon, Red-naped Falcon(babylonicus), Red-naped Shaheen (babylonicus), Shaheen (peregrinator), Siberian Peregrine Falcon (calidus).

Distribution: Afrotropical/Australasian/ Indomalayan/Nearctic/Neotropical/Oceanian/Palearctic. The most cosmopolitan bird species, breeding on every continent except Antarctica.

Indonesia: Sumatera, Kalimantan(Borneo) Java, Bali, Suawesi(Celebensis), Maluku, Papua and Nusa Tenggara

Subspecies: 19 races. F. p. anatum: Breeds in North America south of tundra in CANADA and UNITED STATES to northern MEXICO (Baja California, Sinaloa, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi); CUBA (1 record); winters from southern UNITED STATES to ARGENTINA?; F. p. babylonicus: Asia from eastern IRAN to MONGOLIA and PAKISTAN; F. p. brookei: Southern FRANCE, SPAIN and coastal North Africa through Mediterranean to Caucasus; F. p. calidus: Eurasian tundra from Lapland east to northeastern SIBERIA Yana River and Indigirka River); winters in northeastern and eastern CHINA, south to SOUTH AFRICA and BORNEO; F. p. cassini: Western South America from ECUADOR south through BOLIVIA (Cochabamba), PERU (Cuzco, Juní Lambayeque, Piura), and northern ARGENTINA to southern CHILE, TIERRA DEL FUEGO and FALKLAND ISLANDS; north in non-breeding season to COLOMBIA; F. p. ernesti: Malay Peninsula, INDONESIA and PHILIPPINES east to NEW GUINEA and BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO; F. p. furuitii: Formerly VOLCANO Islands (and possibly Bonin Islands), but may now be extinct; F.p. japonensis: Northeastern SIBERIA south to Kamchatka, JAPAN, and TAIWAN; F. p. macropus: AUSTRALIA (except for the Southwest) and TASMANIA; F. p. madens: CAPE VERDE IS.; F. p. minor: Africa south of Sahara and north into extreme S MOROCCO; F. p. nesiotes: VANUATU and NEW CALEDONIA east to FIJI; F. p. pealei: Coastal western North America from western ALASKA through Aleutian and Commander Islands (possibly also coastal Kamchatka and Kuril Islands), and coastal British Columbia to western Washington; F. p. pelegrinoides: CANARY ISLANDS east through inland North Africa to IRAQ and probably western IRAN; Fp. . peregrinator: PAKISTAN, INDIA and SRI LANKA east to southeastern CHINA; F. p. peregrinus: Eurasia south of tundra and north of the Pyrenees, Balkans and Himalayas from BRITISH ISLES east to Amurland and Ussuriland in Russian Far East; F. p. radama: MADAGASCAR and COMORO ISLANDS; F. p. submelanogenys: Southwestern AUSTRALIA; F. p. tundrius: Arctic tundra of North America from ALASKA to GREENLAND; winters in South America as far south as CHILE and ARGENTINA.

Indonesia: F.p. ernesti and F.p.calidus

Taxonomy: Formerly placed in the genus Rhynchodon. The “Barbary Falcon,” including the races pelegrinoides and babylonicus, has often been treated as a separate species, but molecular analyses have shown little, if any, divergence between these populations and other peregrine subspecies (Seibold et al. 1993, Wink et al. 2000). According to cytochrome b analyses by Wink and Sauer-Gurth (2000), F. peregrinus does not show much haplotype variation, implying that it is either a young taxon, or that there is frequent gene flow between the subspecies. Analyses of nucleotide sequences in the cytochrome b gene also showed that the F. peregrinus-F. pelegrinoides complex forms a sister group to the “Hierofalco” group, which includes the Gyrfalcon, Lagger Falcon, Saker Falcon, and Lanner Falcon (Wink and Sauer-Gürth 2000, 2004, Wink et al. 2004). The South American “Falco kreyenborgii”, formerly regarded as a separate species (Meyer de Schauensee 1970, Blake 1977, Stresemann and Amadon 1979), proved to be a color morph of F. peregrinus cassini (Ellis et al. 1981, Ellis and Grant 1983), as had been suggested earlier by Hellmayr and Conover (1949). Peters (1931) treated kreyenborgi as a race of F.p. cassini.

Maps Links:  Peregrine Falcon in the world

Movements: Higher latitude populations are generally complete, long-distance migrants, and those in lower latitudes are sedentary, although they may be somewhat nomadic during the non-breeding season. The migratory populations utilize each of the five great migratory flyways described by Bildstein (2006). In the Americas, the annual round trip from the northern Arctic to regions near Antarctica can involved at least 22,000 km (Sick 1993). Juveniles tend to disperse very widely in their first year, but birds from more southerly and insular populations are largely sedentary thereafter. Birds breeding on Tierra del Fuego migrate north to the South American mainland in the austral winter (Humphrey et al. 2004), and individuals of austral South American cassini may move as far north as Colombia during the non-breeding season. In Australia, adults may disperse irregularly during climatic extremes, e.g., prolonged droughts, or exhibit minor movements at extremes of their ranges (Blakers et al. 1984).

Habitat and Habits: Occurs in a tremendous variety of habitats throughout its enormous range, but the availability of cliffs or buildings for nesting and roosting is a common denominator of most peregrine home ranges. In Scotland and many other parts of the world, especially North America, pairs are increasingly moving into man-made sites, including lowland quarries (both active and disused), building ledges, bridges, and storage towers (Etheridge et al. 2006). In the Cayman Islands and other Neotropical localities, migrants and wintering birds occur along shores and bluffs, mangrove and Conocarpus sp. forest and shrubland, lagoons and ponds, secondary and freshwater wetlands, and over dry forest and scrubland (Bradley 2000). Usually occurs singly or in pairs, although migrating or wintering birds may congregate on beaches, marshlands, and even over agricultural fields behind farm equipment (Pyle and Howell 1993).

Food and Feeding Behavior: Feeds mainly on birds, including poultry in many areas. Also takes bats (Ash and Miskell 1998). Most prey is taken on the wing, following an incredibly rapid stoop or by swift aerial pursuit, but it also still-hunts from an exposed perch. At sea, ships provide high perches from which peregrines launch attacks on storm-petrels and other seabirds (Woods and Woods 2006). Prey is often dismembered and eaten in flight. Pairs sometimes hunts in tandem.

Breeding: Nests mainly in scrapes on cliff ledges, but there are local tree-nesting populations which use the old nests of other species, and city buildings, bridges, and other man-made structures are now favored nest sites in many parts of the world. Clutch size is 3-4 eggs in most regions, but ranges from 2-6. The eggs are creamy white, heavily suffused with markings of reddish-brown. Both parents participate in incubation, which typically lasts for 32-35 days (White et al. 2002), but most is done by the female. Males hatch first. Both parents feed the young, but typically the male captures prey and delivers it to the female. The nestling period is 35-42 days (Sherrod et al. 1981), with some variation between subspecies. The young remain dependent on the parents for up to five weeks after fledging. At temperate and tropical latitudes, replacement clutches are often laid if the first is lost. Most pairs have alternative nest sites, which are used in some years.

Conservation: The Peregrine Falcon was the first species for which the eggshell thinning effects of DDE, a breakdown metabolite of the pesticide DDT, were documented (Ratcliffe 1967, Hickey and Anderson 1968, Cade et al. 1971). Its rapid decline and subsequent recovery during the last half of the 20th century is one of the best documented conservation case histories on record. Following near universal bans on the use of DDT in the 1970s and 1980s, the species recovered throughout its vast range, and some populations are larger now than before the introduction of synthetic pesticides. Peregrines and other large falcons still face the usual problems of persecution and habitat loss in many areas, and the sport of rock-climbing has made some former nest sites unusable. However, losses from these sources have been somewhat offset by the increasing number of peregrines nesting in cities on large buildings and bridges, a trend that has increased both the nesting distribution and density of the species on almost every continent. As elsewhere, the European population increased markedly between 1970-1990, and almost all populations, except for those in Turkey, continued to inrease from 1990-2000. The peregrine was evaluated as “Secure” in Europe by BirdLife International (2004), and it is now categorized globally as a species of “Least Concern” by BirdLife International.

Population Estimates: The European population was estimated at 7,600 to 11,000 breeding pairs (BirdLife International/European Bird Census Council 2000), but this was soon revised upward to the broad range of 12,000 to 25,000 breeding pairs (BirdLife International 2004). A nationwide survey of peregrines in the United States and Alaska in 2003 yielded an estimate of 3,005 nesting pairs (Green et al. 2006). The most recent (2005) nationwide survey in Canada indicated that there were at least 969 mature anatum and 199 tundrius Peregrine Falcons, but these numbers were thought to be lower than the actual population, especially for tundrius (COSEWIC 2009).

For More information all abaout Peregrine Falcon: www.globalraptors.org

Important References:

Andrew, P. 1992. The birds of Indonesia: a checklist (Peter’s sequence).  Kukila Checklist no. 1. Indonesian Ornithological Society, Jakarta,  Indonesia.

Cade, T.J. 1982. Falcons of the world. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.

Cade, T.J., J.H. Enderson, C.G. Thelander, and C.M. White (eds.). 1988.Peregrine Falcon populations: their management and recovery. The Peregrine Fund, Inc., Boise, ID. 949 pp.

Coates, B.J., and K.D. Bishop. 1997. A guide to the birds of Wallacea,  Sulawesi, the Moluccas and Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia. Dove Publications, Alderley, Queensland, Australia.

Farmer, C.J., L.J. Goodrich, E. Ruelas Inzunzas, and J.P. Smith. 2007. Conservation status of North American raptors. Conservation status report: Peregrine Falcon.

http://hawkmountain.org/media/peregrineCSR_June07.pdf.

Hickey, J.J. (ed.). 1968. Peregrine Falcon populations: their biology and decline. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. 596 pp.

Hickey, J.J., and D.W. Anderson. 1968. Chlorinated hydrocarbons and eggshell changes in raptorial and fish-eating birds. Science 162:271-273.

Monneret, R.-J. 2000. Le faucon pèlerin. 2nd ed. Delachaux and Niestle, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Peakall, D.B. 1974. DDE: its presence in peregrine eggs in 1948. Science  183:673-674.

Ratcliffe, D.A. 1967. Decrease in eggshell weight in certain birds of prey. Nature 215:208-210.

Ratcliffe, D.A. 1983. The Peregrine Falcon. 2nd ed. T & AD Poyser, London. Sherrod, S.K. 1983. Behavior of fledgling peregrines. The Peregrine Fund, Inc., Ithaca, NY.

van Balen, B.S. 1998. Tropical forest raptors in Indonesia: recent information on distribution, status, and conservation. Journal of Raptor Research 32:56-63.

Weaver, J.D., and T.J. Cade. 1991. Falcon propagation: a manual on captive breeding. 3rd ed. The Peregrine Fund, Boise, ID.

White, C.M. 1994. Peregrine Falcon. Pp. 274-275 in del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott, and J. Sargatal (eds). Handbook of birds of the world. Vol. 2. New World vultures to guineafowl. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain.

White, C.M., N.J. Clum, T.J. Cade, and W.G. Hunt. 2002. Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus). In A. Poole and F. Gill (eds.), The Birds of North America no. 660. Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and American Ornithologists’ Union, Washington, D.C.