Watch out for this maverick
Falcons perch on a separate branch of the evolutionary tree to other birds of prey. Genetic studies show how peregrines, kestrels and the dapper merlin are more akin to parrots than the eagles and hawks they have shared bird book pages with over the decades.
Ask any birdwatcher to choose their favourite British bird of prey and most would name one of the handful of falcons that are regularly seen in our towns and countryside.
My personal choice is the sleek-winged hobby, arguably the nearest thing in feathers to the awesome war plane flown by Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick.
Up to 650 pairs nest in the UK each summer after arriving from their wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, they display aerial skills honed for catching dragonflies and fast-flying swifts, martins and swallows.
Lucky British birdwatchers have recently been treated to the sight of another birdcatching specialist, the larger, more powerful and incredibly rare Eleonora’s falcon.
Named after Eleonora of Arborea, a medieval Sardinian judge whose 14th-century code of laws included protecting nests from illegal hunters, the falcon has one of the most unusual survival strategies of any other European bird.
Small numbers of these falcons – which come in two colour phases, light and dark – arrive from Madagascar in late spring to nest on rocky outcrops and uninhabited islands dotted throughout the Mediterranean.
Rather than breed before the summer solstice, the falcon synchronises its nesting season to feed young on shrikes, nightingales, warblers, redstarts and wheatears returning to Africa from northern Europe during the autumn.
Since the first sighting of an Eleonora’s falcon in Merseyside in 1977, there have only been six other records, one-day visits, tantalising unobtainable for hardcore twitchers.
But this spring the falcon truly landed. For the closing days of May into June, a young male bird held court in the Sandwich Bay area of Kent, giving a procession of birdwatchers ample opportunity to study its subtle pale-phase plumage.
Birdwatchers could finally study the falcon’s pale-phase plumage