How Fast Is A Gyrfalcon? | Earth Unplugged 

Very lucky

@@khaalidali5891 Thank you. The mom and her little one still live in the trees in my backyard. We have some redwoods they love. I just saw one swoop down and get a mouse or something while I was doing the dishes the other day. The wing span is amazing. I really have enjoyed sharing our space together these last few yrs.

@@kb.9211 cool the most i see is a sparrowhawk in a blue moon

Do you live in the arctic, that where gyrfalcons nest.

Pretty sure that not a Gyr in your backyard

No kidding. Bird hunters in the Middle East and Northern Africa are what's causing many of the European songbird and raptor populations to decline.

I’m pretty sure the fastest falcon (I think it’s a falcon lol) is the Eurasian Hobby!! :D

Peregrine Falcon is the fastest

@@caiodosanjos157 only while diving, in terms of level flying the gyr is faster at 90mph compared to the peregrines 65mph. Afterall the gyr does prey on peregrines

Hunter Clarkson but if you look at the original comment, he just said fastest, not fastest flyer. The fastest falcon is still a peregrine. The fastest flyer of the falcons is the gyr, all about the phrasing

Steve R yet gyrfalcons prey on peregrines

My chickens have been known do times of less than 1.5 hours in conditions up to 200°

nope, it reaches 93 km/h (54mph) anyway the sprint is not impresive for a gyrfalcon , the top speed of this birds at level flight is 145 km/h (90 mph)

Thank you very much!!!!

@ on dive bombing peregrine wins, on level flight gyrfalcon is crearly faster, however this particular falcon is not giving everything, just playing around, gyrfalcon doubles the size of a peregrine

Ian Cook not everything is about pigeons

Hmm...? Didn't say it was.

gyrfalcon vs pigeon could only have one outcome. Falcons only kill other birds and while pigeons are very aerobatic they are not a match for a predator with the speed, eyesight (over 1 mile), and talons of these assassins. Peregrines actually prefer pigeons over any other bird....

Lori he’s saying that a pigeon has a higher speed and endurance. This is true. If a falcon raced a pigeon it would more than likely lose every time. Pigeons have much faster acceleration and top speed with a higher endurance. They can maintain higher speeds for longer amounts of time. The advantage of the falcon is to have the high ground and start a stoop to gain maximum speed by the time the pigeon see them it’s usually too late. Cheers 🍻

@@luketw2818 A little google research will show you that gyrfalcons and pigeons have around the same horizontal top speed (with the falcon a bit faster) and with the far superior dive speed the falcon is definitely faster, however there is no doubt that pigeons have superior endurance. The only area where pigeons can match falcons in horizontal flight speed is when bred and trained as racing pigeons, this not comparable though because there aren't really any purpose bred acing falcons.

dive bombing... and i think that's peregrines, not sure if gyrs hunt the same way, they seem to use be more of an endurance hunter... but i'm not 100% sure...

@strawberry Kiys: it's true that pigeons and ducks can fly away when people use falcons to hunt them, but that is not an accurate comparison - it is just one type of situation and there might be many reasons for that outcome. When I and my father tried to measure the speed of falcons and their prey (pigeons, ducks, crows and others) in level flight, it appeared to us that both falcons (saker, peregrine, gyrfalcons), pigeons and ducks could pretty certainly do 100km/h, maybe even more. And it appeared to us that the max speed of all these birds wasn't too different (I admit our estimates were not precise by any means). Apart from that my father once trained a sacer falcon, which was able to hunt down wild pigeons at pretty much every second attempt in a level endurance flight, sometimes even when starting from a lower point than the pigeons. It was the only such specimen out of many many dozens of falcons my father has trained in his life (he used to train falcons for Arabs). We don't know what this one falcon's secret was, but I think that it was rather a psychological thing: this one falcon was actually the only one to perform such deeds, but it was also the only one that actually really TRIED to do that. All the other falcons usually discernably didn't really try, after a weak try they were like "level endurance hunt? no, thank you". So my theory is that the big falcons actually can fly as good as pigeons and ducks in a level flight, but also hardly much better, and they just don't do that, because it is probably a very inefficient way to hunt. A level endurance chase means that the falcon will totally exhaust himself and then the pigeon is maybe quite maneuvrable and the duck - well the falcon would have to fight the duck being completely exhausted, because it will not be able to strike the duck as falcons love to do, if the duck goes 100km/h and the falcon goes 110km/h. So I think it's just that the ratio between exhaustion and the chance to get something to eat is just too bad and so that's just not the way falcons hunt. By the way, where did you get that stuff with smaller breast muscles from? Is it something reliable or is it just your own thoughts? (I don't know either btw.)

@@albertdittel8898I think that your elaboration is spot on, I will only add some additional info. I'm training immature peregrine female with the car lure and after couple of good chases she was able to go little over 100 km/h according to GPS telemetry, so your estimates are right. My guess is that in her second season and with good training she will be able to go close to 120 km/h in still air. And your theory about energy management, how I like to call it, is absolutely right and that is exactly the reason why immature falcons in their first year have so high mortality rate. Young birds tend to tail chase and for a good reason. The first one is the fitness, they need to bulk up their muscles and they need to get endurance. They have greater wing surface and longer tails compared to adult birds to help them save more energy, because the less wing loading bird has, the less energy she needs to stay airborne and the bird is more maneuverable. This allows them to spend some time in gaining the experience and muscle mass and to develop hunting tactics, other than tail chase, for better energy management.The down side of that is higher drag, especially at higher speeds and that means that adult birds with their low drag aerodynamics and higher muscle mass are faster both in level flight and in the stoop, and they can exploit that by using approach that requires less energy. Young birds that are not successful in developing the right hunting tactics and lose to much energy in chasing very maneuverable prey are doomed and more than often die from hunger. That is exactly the reason why we rarely see an adult wild peregrines taking long tail chases after pigeons when they miss in the first attempt. They have the speed to overtake the pigeon, but the pigeon can outmaneuver the falcon and the energy cost of such chase is much higher compared to another high altitude ambush attack on unsuspecting victim.

DjDedan and pigeons

Nahh

Mr Logical It is a falcon. And yes, it is gorgeous.

Makes humans look ugly

dj sourcream Falcons are hawk relatives I thought? 🤔

Not really. They are both raptors tho.

ғɪʟʟ 1ɴ ᴛ҉ ʜ3 ʙʟᴀɴᴋs falcons are hawk relatives. I'm just saying that it is a falcon instead of a hawk.

What an epic dinosaur.

What an epic RAPTOR!

Salmon Fish 69th like

yelistener what epic spelling

LOL!

NO. That only happens with a strong tail wind assistance.

I would rate this a 2 out of 5 stars video, poor test. For best results, the falcon should have performed a stoop, a dive and don't tell me that's cheating, because the falcon can maintaine the same speed performed by the stoop even at a horizontal distance.

That's so cool! Ours is the saker :)

stfu anatolians

naughty

Horizontal flight is the slowest, diving speed is the fastest. There are different methods and speeds of flying.

wow!!

From French "gerfaucon". The ger/gyr would either derive from Old High German "gir" (vulture, b/c of its size compared to other falcons) or Latin "gyrus" (circle, b/c of its circling as it searches for prey).