Peregrine falcons, the fastest animals on Earth, are discovered in Marin throughout the year.
Why be intrigued in birds? If I needed to make the case to my 8-year-old self, I may highlight an easy however easy-to-forget truth: they are quickly. Really, actually quickly.
Some aspects of this show up in astonishing numbers, the sort of records that individuals like to arrange and speak about. But the most personally important and impactful awareness of the speed of birds is not what we just check out, however what we see with our own eyes. Let’s review both.
Start with a simple and familiar case: hummingbirds. In their typical, daily flight, hummingbirds may take a trip at some 30 miles per hour. (Compare this to people, who may handle 5 miles in an hour.) But this is far from their optimum speed. Our own Anna’s hummingbirds, the familiar, year-round hummingbird of California, has actually been determined reaching 60 miles per hour in their courtship flights. This is taking place all around us, if you view and listen. Male hummingbirds climb up easily a hundred feet into the sky, hover for a minute and after that toss themselves at the Earth, bring up at the last minute with a loud “pop!” from their flaring tail plumes. This is the fastest velocity understood for any vertebrate animal.
Birds’ flight capabilities are, obviously, likewise incredible over longer ranges. Anna’s hummingbirds are year-round locals in California, however in spring and summertime we are likewise gone to by Allen’s and rufous hummingbirds. Rufous hummingbirds have an especially excellent migration, travelling through Marin on their method to breeding premises in Alaska and northwest Canada prior to going back to Mexico for the winter season, a range of some 4,000 miles. It is not unexpected to see this bird, called “the iron-blooded midget” by one vibrant long time bird-writer, going after the bigger Anna’s hummingbirds far from a feeder, when you understand that this penny-weight of bird fire is midway through a 4,000-mile migration powered just by bugs and flower nectar.
Another group of birds that we consider quick are raptors. A yard Cooper’s hawk unexpectedly breaking out in ambush is quickly adequate to capture its victim. But they don’t compare to the fastest in the raptor world — the falcons.
Photo by Mick Thompson
Diminutive, rusty-flanked rufous hummingbirds are travelling through Marin on their long migration north.
Marin sees 4 falcon types throughout the year, with all 4 most many in winter season, which as far as bird migration goes has actually not yet expired: American kestrels, merlins, peregrine falcons, and meadow falcons. Peregrine falcons are the fastest animal worldwide, efficient in diving at more than 200 miles per hour. We can see them nesting on cliffs at Point Reyes or on high structures around the metropolitan Bay Area (have a look at the Cal Falcons web cam to view a set nesting on top of UC Berkeley’s Campanile). In winter season you can see them throughout Marin, especially near bodies of water where they chase after shorebirds, ducks, and gulls in addition to a range of songbird victim.
Hummingbirds and falcons are 2 of California’s most well-known speedsters. But there is a 3rd bird that joins them, one whose speed typically gets neglected: doves. In Miwok stories, falcon and hummingbird obstacle dove to a race, without success. “When he and I race, it is a tie,” says hummingbird in one story. Falcon makes the exact same admission: “We run the same.”
It’s a lesson we need to keep in mind, when we see doves rotating innocently around our yards, searching for seeds. Mourning doves, our little, spotted-winged native types with the well-known cooing tune, are most likely our most familiar doves, and a rewarding entry in the record of bird speed, having actually been determined taking a trip as much as 55 miles per hour, equivalent to peregrine falcons in more normal horizontal flight.
But my preferred doves to view are our 2nd native types, the band-tailed pigeon. These are wild pigeons, the closest living family members of the extinct guest pigeons, which utilized to take a trip throughout the continent in excellent flocks of countless birds that darkened the sky for days at a time. Band-tails don’t collect in such huge flocks, however they do still take a trip in groups, in some cases by the lots, in some cases in the hundreds. And when the wild pigeons hurry overhead with a hundred heavy bodies pulsing through the air, I hear the whistle of wings fluctuate in pitch with the rapidity of their death, smiling that I get to witness a world that has such speed still in it.
Jack Gedney’s On the Wing runs every other Monday. He is a co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Novato and author of The Private Lives of Public Birds. You can reach him at [email protected].
