Falcon

If you're a Falcon

You see the target, you commit, you arrive before anyone has finished the sentence. A peregrine dives at over three hundred kilometers an hour and hits birds in mid-air with a clenched foot; you are bold, fast, solitary and very hard to keep up with. You will travel anywhere and settle only where the view is sheer.

A peregrine's nostrils have small bony cones inside them that slow the incoming air during a dive, the same principle as the cone in a jet engine intake.

The Falcon as a spirit animal

Matching a Falcon says you are decisive, fast and fearless, and you do not see why anyone needs more than one attempt. You are loyal to one partner and one high ledge, and indifferent to the rest. The flaw is impatience, and the fact that a strategy built on speed looks reckless to everyone standing still. Peregrines fold their wings and drop. It works. It is also terrifying to watch.

Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.

How to get along with a Falcon

When it goes wrong: A Falcon under pressure strikes first and explains never; give them a clear target that isn't you, and wait for the speed to burn off.

The Falcon in a relationship

You love at speed and then, oddly, for life. Peregrine pairs court with aerial chases and mid-air food passes, return to the same ledge every year and share the hunting while the chicks are small; you fall hard, decide fast and stay. The ledge matters more than the ceremony.

Best matchCheetahThe fastest animal on land and the fastest in the air, each with the same hunting plan: one perfect burst.

Handle with carePigeonA city peregrine's diet is mostly pigeon, and the pigeon is aware of this.

Field notes

Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works

Sociability

2

Boldness

10

Energy

9

Curiosity

4

Devotion

7

Roaming

9

• The peregrine falcon breeds on every continent except Antarctica, which makes it one of the most widespread birds in the world.
• City peregrines nest on cathedrals and tower blocks and eat mostly pigeons.
• Peregrine pairs return to the same ledge for years; the male is about a third smaller than the female.

Falcons in literature

• Federigo's Falcon — The Decameron (Fifth Day, Ninth Story), Giovanni Boccaccio (1353)
• The Falcon — The Canterbury Tales (The Squire's Tale), Geoffrey Chaucer (1395)
• The Windhover — The Windhover, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.

Closest personalities

The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Falcon's. If you got Falcon, one of these was probably your runner-up.

• 

  Eagle92% alike

• 

  Polar Bear89% alike

• 

  Hummingbird89% alike

Other birds

EagleOwlRavenHummingbirdPeacockPenguinFlamingoAlbatrossParrotSwanWoodpeckerOstrichPigeon

Among the 60

Gustav Mützel (1839–1893), The Royal Natural History, Richard Lydekker (1893). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits