Peregrine Falcon Trivia
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48 free Peregrine Falcon trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal alive and the most widespread raptor on the planet, and this quiz covers both claims in detail: the recorded 389 km/h stoop, the bony nostril tubercles and third eyelids that make such dives survivable, the clenched-foot strike, the notched beak that severs a spine, and the roughly one-fifth of all bird species that end up on the menu somewhere in the world. It also follows the peregrine through human history: 3,000 years of falconry, medieval rankings that placed it just below the gyrfalcon, the Second World War intercepting of homing pigeons, the DDT crash and the hacking programme that got it off the US endangered list in 1999, the return to cathedral ledges and skyscrapers, Ra's falcon head, Chicago's city bird, the Idaho quarter, J. A. Baker's classic book and the Suzuki motorbike that borrowed its Japanese name. Easy questions ask what it eats and where it nests; hard ones want flicker-fusion rates, subspecies counts and Latin roots. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the peregrine falcon, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Birds and Bald Eagle quizzes go wider.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Why does a falconer slip a leather hood over a peregrine's head?
To keep it calm
To keep it calm. A falcon reacts to almost everything it sees, so with its eyes covered it sits quietly on the fist until the falconer is ready to fly it.
Q 02Which sex of peregrine falcon is larger?
The female
The female. She can weigh half as much again as her mate, and early in nesting she guards the chicks while the smaller male hunts for the whole family.
Q 03What is the peregrine's historical North American nickname?
Duck hawk
Duck hawk. The American subspecies still carries the name in Latin as anatum, 'of ducks', and coastal peregrines really do knock ducks out of the air.
Q 04Peregrines live almost everywhere, yet they are entirely absent from which of these islands?
New Zealand
New Zealand. Its only falcon is the kārearea, a native forest hunter found nowhere else, while peregrines breed in Britain, Madagascar and Sri Lanka alike.
Q 05Both the English and scientific names of the peregrine mean what?
Wandering falcon
Wandering falcon. Latin peregrinus means 'coming from foreign parts', and the name may first have marked young birds caught on their travels instead of taken from the nest.
Q 06Which 1962 book warned America about the farm chemicals that were wiping out its peregrines?
Silent Spring
Silent Spring. Rachel Carson's bestseller turned public opinion against blanket spraying, and within ten years the United States had banned the worst offender from its farms.
Q 07Which pesticide was chiefly responsible for the peregrine's collapse in the mid-20th century?
DDT
DDT. It built up in the falcons' bodies and thinned their eggshells until they cracked under the sitting parents, and by the late 1960s the bird had vanished from the eastern United States.
Q 08The peregrine's beak is notched near the tip so that it can do what?
Sever the spinal column of prey
Sever the spinal column of prey. Any bird still alive after capture is finished with a quick bite through the vertebrae of the neck.
Q 09A 2021 study concluded the black malar stripe under a peregrine's eye serves to do what?
Reduce glare
Reduce glare. In photos from across the bird's range, the stripe was bigger wherever the sunlight is stronger, which should help it pinpoint agile prey in a bright sky.
Q 10Trained peregrines are flown at which sites to scare other birds away?
Airports
Airports. Their handlers fly them to frighten flocks away from the runways, cutting the risk of a bird colliding with an aircraft.
Q 11The word 'falcon' probably comes from the Latin for which farm tool?
Sickle
Sickle. Latin falx, a curved blade, probably gave the bird its name, whether for its hooked talons and beak or for the sweep of its pointed wings in flight.
Q 12In 1530 Emperor Charles V gave the Knights Hospitaller which island for a yearly rent of one falcon?
Malta
Malta. The knights sent the bird to the emperor's viceroy in Sicily every year, and the peregrine of the Mediterranean is still known as the Maltese falcon.
Q 13What is the peregrine's characteristic high-speed hunting dive called?
A stoop
A stoop. The falcon climbs high, folds its wings and drops like a stone at more than 200 mph, which makes it the fastest animal on Earth.
Q 21How does a peregrine usually kill or stun its prey?
Strikes it with a clenched foot in mid-air
Strikes it with a clenched foot in mid-air. The blow stuns or kills outright, and the falcon swings back round to catch the tumbling bird before it reaches the ground.
Q 22Which mammals are the peregrine's most common night-time prey?
Bats
Bats. Peregrines snatch them out of the air like any small bird and may eat them on the wing, and a few falcons have been reported to specialise in them.
Q 23Where does a peregrine normally nest?
In a scrape on a cliff edge
Q 14Bony tubercles in a peregrine's nostrils are thought to help it do what in a dive?
Breathe by deflecting the airflow
Breathe by deflecting the airflow. At 200 mph the rush of air might otherwise burst a bird's lungs, and the little baffles are thought to slow it at the nostril.
Q 15Peregrines protect their eyes during a dive using what?
Nictitating membranes
Nictitating membranes. These third eyelids blink again and again during a dive, wiping away debris and spreading tears without the falcon losing sight of its target.
Q 16How do peregrine parents train their fledglings to hunt?
Drop prey for them to chase
Drop prey for them to chase. Once the young can fly, the adults let go of a kill in the air, and the fledglings learn to snatch the falling meal before they hunt for themselves.
Q 17To clock his peregrine at 242 mph, falconer Ken Franklin did what alongside her?
Skydived from a plane
Skydived from a plane. In 1999 he jumped with his falcon Frightful from about three miles up, with a tiny recording chip fastened to her tail feathers.
Q 18In courtship, how does a female peregrine collect a gift of prey from her mate?
Flying upside down beneath him
Flying upside down beneath him. She rolls over in flight and takes the catch straight out of his talons, a pass the pair repeat through the nesting season.
Q 19What is a peregrine falcon chick called?
An eyas
An eyas. A parent tears each kill into small pieces and passes them delicately to the eyases, which are ready to fly in about six weeks.
Q 20A peregrine pair returns year after year to the same nesting site, known as what?
An eyrie
An eyrie. The best sites pass from one generation to the next, and some have been occupied by successive pairs of falcons for hundreds of years.
In a scrape on a cliff edge. Peregrines build no nest at all: the eggs lie in a shallow hollow scratched out of the soil or gravel of a high ledge.
Q 24Which owl is a notorious night-time killer of young peregrines in North America?
Great horned owl
Great horned owl. It takes nestlings and fledglings in the dark, and it was a constant menace at the sites where captive-bred young were set free.
Q 25Peregrine pairs sometimes team up on difficult prey by doing what?
Taking turns to dive at it
Taking turns to dive at it. One falcon swoops, then the other, so the quarry gets no rest until one of the pair makes the catch.
Q 26At what time of day do peregrines do most of their hunting?
At dawn and dusk
At dawn and dusk. That is when the birds they chase are most active, though city peregrines have learned to keep striking after dark by the glow of the streets.
Q 27Before eating a bird it has caught, a peregrine usually does what?
Plucks its feathers
Plucks its feathers. The kill is carried to a favourite perch and stripped first, and a mother plucks every meal before she feeds it to her chicks.
Q 28In falconry, the peregrine's habit of circling above the falconer until game is flushed is called what?
Waiting on
Waiting on. The falcon holds its height overhead until the game breaks cover, then dives on it faster than the quarry can fly.
Q 29Which bird is the favourite prey of peregrines that live in cities?
Pigeons
Pigeons. City flocks are a ready larder all year round, which is one reason peregrines have settled in towns around the world.
Q 30Whose 1972 ban on a notorious pesticide cleared the way for the peregrine's American comeback?
The Environmental Protection Agency
The Environmental Protection Agency. With the poison gone, thousands of captive-bred young were set free, and in 1999 the peregrine came off the endangered species list.