Peregrine tercel this am. Back to the wild. Does not require dinosaur juice to go +100 knots.

Can't do it in level flight though!

There is a small population of them that live on Morro Rock in Morro Bay, Ca. I've been lucky enough to see them fly on a few occasions, they are incredible birds.

No, but I have observed them do a forward tumble in horizontal flight.
Mallards respect them!

Your post sent me to Wikipedia to look up the word "tercel" which I always thought was just the name for an ugly compact Toyota.

From Wikipedia:
The traditional term for a male falcon is 'tercel' (British spelling) or 'tiercel' (American spelling), from the Latin tertius (third) because of the belief that only one in three eggs hatched a male bird. Some sources give the etymology as deriving from the fact that a male falcon is about one-third smaller than a female.

Anyways, per Wiki, it turns out peregrines are A LOT faster than 100 kts. Supposedly one has been clocked at over 240 mph!

The fastest bird in N America in level flight is the Prairie Falcon. 88 mph IIRC. Smallish bird with elliptical wings.

I use tercel in reference to size difference. We used to quote exceeding 180 mph and I did hear rumor of higher speed, but, both of those are in a dive. Those big ole females chicks typically toss the little ones out of the nest...

Nest mortality of P's around here is significant...Great Horned Owls and Golden Eagles kill many.

In a the early 70s I trapped and banded raptors on the west shore of Lake Michigan. We hung some of the early transmitters on peregrines and golden eagles and they were tracked on their migration. I should say, I attempted to assist others in installing the transmitters, P's carried them on off the base of their tail feathers.

The true miracle of flight is in the birds...highly efficient passive and active respiratory systems, hollow honeycombed bones, central muscle masses using tendons to get the jazz outboard on the wings etc. it is incredible to see a bird come out of a stoop that would have us unconscious with dislodged eyeballs and our a/c wings torn off. A great book is The Dynamics of Flight"-AIR. I've seen P's stoop, punch to kill, loop and catch the prey before it hits the ground...it's breath taking.

Anyhow, talking of birds, or presenting a slide show, is a sure way to get the audience snoring. I'll shut up now.

I have to disagree on the dinosaur juice... Are they not largely dinosaurs themselves?


Beautiful bird.

OK, you got me there.
I released a Bald at the same time and hope there is a picture of the refueling process-two mice shoved into it's crop before release.

OK, you got me there.

I released a Bald at the same time and hope there is a picture of the refueling process-two mice shoved into it's crop before release. There might have been a tail hanging out the side of his bill at the time(I don't dress them up).

I have to give credit to the folks, unknown to me, on the east slope that did the rehab work-both lead poisoning. I just released them in the area from which they were originally captured. I used do that work and it is time consuming with a very low success rate-if the rehab person is really being honest with themselves. I thought it was <10% on long term birds actually standing a chance of making it in the wild.

Anyhow, a bird feather is the original velcro component...self repairing to a large extend with preening. Then, it's molted and they get a brand new flight control surface, with no immediate repletion of their retirement account.

Osprey fishing ... slow-motion:

[youtube]https://youtu.be/yQOVcP67zFM[/youtube]