Species profile
About the eleonora’s falcon
Eleonora's falcon breeds on Mediterranean sea cliffs and migrates the length of Africa to winter in the east and on Madagascar. Tanzania sits on that wintering route, and small numbers hunt insects on the wing over the miombo and baobab country of Ruaha and the southern parks.
It is a long-winged, long-tailed falcon that occurs in both a pale and a dark morph, and it is famous for an extraordinary breeding strategy: it delays nesting until late summer so its chicks are raised on the autumn stream of small migrating songbirds.
Life in the wild
Behavior & relationships
Behavior
Hunts insects on the wing at height, often in loose parties at dusk, with fast, buoyant, tern-like flight.
Social life
Colonial on its Mediterranean breeding cliffs; loosely gregarious on migration and in its African wintering range.
What makes it remarkable
Special features
Breeding timed to the autumn songbird migration, and a migration route of some 9,000 kilometres to East Africa and Madagascar.