United States
£ GBP
Over the last five years, the urban population of Peregrines has increased dramatically. In part this was due to the increase in urban pigeon populations – where pigeons breed, Peregrines can flourish. But the human populations of towns and cities have also helped, providing potential breeding sites and installing video cameras so that urban folk can watch and admire the falcons. Renowned for their speed and flight abilities, a bird that once could only be seen in remote, wild places, became a star of local CCTV.
This updated book investigates all aspects of Peregrine 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 arguably the fastest creature on the planet. Allied to excellent photography the result is a comprehensive book on this most iconic bird.
For the second edition, all chapters have been revised with chapters 1 and 3 in particular featuring substantial revision and addition of new material. In chapter 1 the latest taxonomical research has been included to provide an updated picture of Falconiformes phylogenetics. Dissections and computer reconstructions have revealed more about the structure of the air sacs that are part of the respiratory system. Chapter 3 provides new data and discussion on the function and evolutionary origin of the Peregrine's tubercle (a cone-shaped structure in the nostril) and dispels some of the myths surrounding this structure. Additionally, results from micro-CT scanning reveal previously unseen details on bone thickness of limb and wing bones and on the internal anatomy of the nasal passage. Together with this anatomical data, results from behavioural experiments presented here strongly support the idea that peregrine falcons have a sense of olfaction they use in hunting. Finally, a notable addition to chapter 10 has been consideration of current and expected future impacts on Peregrine falcons of climate change.
Introduction
1. The Falcons 10
2. The Peregrine Falcon 52
3. Flight Characteristics and Senses 114
4. Diet 210
5. Food Consumption and Energy Balance 290
6. Breeding Part 1 300
7. Breeding Part 2 336
8. Movements and Winter Grounds 408
9. Friends and Foes 440
10. Population 462
References 544
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.
Review of the first edition:
"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
