A falcon folding its wings into a 200-mile-per-hour dive is one of the more startling things you can witness in the Arizona sky, and it happens more often than most residents realize. Among the many types of falcons in Arizona, four species show up regularly enough that a patient birdwatcher can expect to check off all of them in a single year. Each one hunts, nests, and moves through the state in its own distinct way.
Arizona’s mix of desert scrub, riparian corridors, red-rock canyons, and high grassland gives falcons plenty of room to spread out. According to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, commonly observed falcons in Arizona include the peregrine falcon, prairie falcon and American kestrel, while the merlin and crested caracara are also in the falcon family. This guide focuses on the four falcons birders are most likely to encounter: the American kestrel, the merlin, the peregrine falcon, and the prairie falcon.
Pro Tip: Falcons hunt with their beaks rather than their talons, using a notched “tomial tooth” to sever the spine of prey. This is one of the easiest ways to distinguish them from hawks and eagles at a glance, since falcons also have narrower, more pointed wings.
American Kestrel
The American kestrel (Falco sparverius) is the falcon most people meet first, often without realizing it, since it perches openly on power lines and fence posts along nearly every highway in the state. According to Animal Spot, the American kestrel is the smallest falcon in Arizona, almost the same size as the American robin. Small size does not mean unimpressive; this is one of the most colorful and recognizable raptors in North America.
Color is the fastest way to identify a kestrel. Males and females both show rusty-red backs and tails, slate-blue wings, and distinctive facial markings that resemble two dark “sideburns” against a pale face. Watch a kestrel hunt for even a minute and its signature move gives it away: it hovers in place over open ground with rapid wingbeats, a technique called kiting, which lets it scan the grass below for movement before dropping onto its target.
Kestrels are opportunistic, taking whatever is easiest to catch in a given season. In the Sonoran Desert, American kestrels thrive by using saguaro cacti and power lines as perches, their vibrant plumage standing out against the desert landscape. Their diet leans heavily on grasshoppers and beetles, along with lizards and the occasional small rodent, which puts them in direct competition with some of the desert’s most common beetle species in Arizona and makes kestrels a natural predator of many lizard species found across Arizona.
Birders sometimes confuse a kestrel’s rust-orange back with the coloring seen on some orange birds in Arizona, though the kestrel’s hovering hunting style and hooked beak set it apart immediately once you know what to look for. Kestrels nest in cavities, including old woodpecker holes and nest boxes, and they are present in Arizona year-round, with numbers swelling in summer when local pairs raise their young.
Merlin
The merlin (Falco columbarius) is a winter visitor, arriving as temperatures drop and disappearing again before the desert heats back up. Data compiled by Bird Advisors shows merlins are winter birds in Arizona, usually spotted from September to April, and recorded in only about 1% of checklists at that time. That low frequency is part of what makes a merlin sighting satisfying; this is not a bird you stumble across every outing.
Identifying a merlin means paying attention to its subspecies, since coloring varies by population. As one field guide explains, Black Merlins appear sleek, dark gray-blue with a bright, streaked white stomach, Prairie Merlins are a deep dusty brown with heavy flecking, and Pacific Northwest Merlins run very dark, almost black. Arizona sits within Prairie Merlin range, so Prairie Merlins are the subspecies most likely to be seen in the state, though other variants can occasionally show up.
Males typically show streaky black-and-silver wings and backs with a lighter, faintly orange chest, while females run lighter overall with brownish-gray to dark-brown backs. Habitat-wise, merlins are flexible. Their preferred range includes grasslands, shrublands, parks, boreal forests, cemeteries, prairies, and near river edges, which puts them in loose proximity to many of the same wetland corridors favored by different types of water birds hunting the same riverbanks.
Merlins are not shy about their reputation. According to Bird Watching HQ, this falcon is an incredibly fierce bird that uses surprise attacks to bring down prey, and it has even been seen attacking trains and cars that enter its territory. Its slate-blue-and-silver back pattern is often mistaken from a distance for other raptors, so birders comparing notes sometimes cross-reference it against birds that are blue to rule out songbirds before confirming a merlin sighting.
Key Insight: Merlins were nearly wiped out in the mid-20th century by pesticide contamination before rebounding once those chemicals were banned, a recovery pattern that mirrors what happened with peregrine falcons across North America.
Peregrine Falcon
The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) is the falcon most people have heard of, largely because of one statistic: it is the fastest animal on the planet. A-Z Animals reports that the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on planet Earth, capable of reaching diving speeds of more than 190 miles per hour during its signature hunting stoop. Few animals on the continent can match that combination of speed and control in open air.
Appearance-wise, peregrines show faint barring over slate gray or bluish-black backs and wings, with breasts that are typically white or tan marked by distinct thin dark lines, along with a bold dark “mustache” mark below the eye that is one of the clearest identification features among Arizona’s raptors. Younger birds run noticeably browner before molting into adult plumage.
Diet reveals just how dominant this falcon is in the air. Bird Watching HQ notes that peregrine falcons primarily eat other birds, with at least 450 different species documented as prey, and they are not picky, taking almost anything they can catch including ducks, gulls, pigeons, and songbirds. Remarkably, these raptors have been observed killing individuals as small as a hummingbird, and as large as a Sandhill Crane, a range that puts even the tiniest hummingbirds in Arizona on the peregrine’s potential menu during migration season.
Peregrines nearly vanished from the country before recovering. As one source on the species explains, they were once endangered due to pesticide use, particularly DDT, which caused thinning eggshells and declining chick survival, until conservation efforts in the 1970s, including banning DDT and running captive breeding programs, aided their recovery. Today, peregrines are found statewide, and they are known to nest on the cliffs of the Grand Canyon, where the vertical rock faces give them ideal launch points for their signature dives. City dwellers have equal odds of spotting one, since the peregrine is found everywhere in Arizona and is often relatively easy to locate thanks to its penchant for city life, where tall buildings substitute for cliffs.
Prairie Falcon
The prairie falcon (Falco mexicanus) is built for the open desert, and it shows in everything from its coloring to its hunting style. Arizona Birds describes it as a medium-sized raptor of open country that occurs year-round in Arizona, favoring arid grasslands, desert scrub, and open foothills, and distinguished by pale brown upperparts, whitish underparts with dark axillary patches visible in flight, and a long tail. That dark patch under the “armpit” of the wing is the single best field mark for separating a prairie falcon from a peregrine at a distance.
The Cornell Lab’s All About Birds guide adds that these falcons are large falcons about the size of a peregrine, with pointed wings and medium-long tails, larger than a merlin but smaller than a Swainson’s hawk. Sightings are most common in remote, undeveloped terrain where the ground cover and cliff faces they depend on remain intact.
Hunting technique sets the prairie falcon apart from its relatives. Rather than diving from height like a peregrine, it often hunts from low altitudes, flapping powerfully across open areas and surprising prey by hugging the ground contours to stay out of view. On the ground, prey ranges from birds to reptiles, putting it in the same food web as many of the state’s rattlesnake species and smaller desert lizards, and its low, fast pursuit still reaches impressive numbers; one source notes prairie falcons can dive at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour in pursuit of food.
Nesting sites tend to be permanent fixtures on the landscape. Arizona Birds notes that prairie falcons nest on cliff ledges or rocky outcrops in Arizona, often reusing traditional sites for many years, which means a productive nesting cliff can stay active across generations of birds. Watson Lake near Prescott is one well-documented example, where Watson Lake is a hotspot for birdwatching that attracts raptors like prairie falcons, thanks to the combination of water and surrounding landscapes creating a diverse ecosystem. The rocky terrain around such lakes also happens to be prime habitat for several types of geckos in Arizona, which occasionally end up on the falcon’s menu alongside larger prey.
Important Note: Speed figures for falcons vary between sources depending on how the dive is measured (airspeed versus ground speed) and which individual bird was recorded. Treat any single number as an approximate benchmark rather than an exact species-wide maximum.
Comparing Arizona’s Four Falcon Species
Size, season, and habitat differ enough between these four birds that a side-by-side comparison makes field identification considerably easier.
| Falcon | Relative Size | Typical Season in Arizona | Preferred Habitat |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Kestrel | Smallest, robin-sized | Year-round | Open fields, roadsides, deserts with perches |
| Merlin | Small, slightly larger than kestrel | Winter (September–April) | Grasslands, riparian edges, parks |
| Peregrine Falcon | Large | Year-round | Cliffs, canyons, urban high-rises |
| Prairie Falcon | Large, slightly smaller than peregrine | Year-round | Arid grasslands, desert scrub, rocky outcrops |
Arizona’s raptor diversity does not stop with falcons. Birders scanning the same skies often pick up several types of eagles in Arizona working the same thermals, and knowing the difference in wing shape and hunting style between the two groups makes identification much faster in the field. Falcons have narrow, pointed wings built for speed, while eagles rely on broader wings for sustained soaring.
Where and When to Look
Timing and location both matter more with falcons than with many other raptors, since three of the four species listed here favor specific seasons or terrain. Spring and early summer tend to produce the most activity overall, since this is when falcons are most active and courtship displays make them easier to spot.
- Grand Canyon rim trails for peregrine falcons nesting on canyon cliff faces
- Watson Lake near Prescott for prairie falcons and other open-water raptors
- Saguaro-studded desert flats for American kestrels perched on cacti and power lines
- Riparian corridors and grasslands from September through April for wintering merlins
- Southeastern Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains, which offer rocky cliffs and canyons that provide a haven for a variety of raptors, including falcons, with ideal nesting sites and hunting grounds
Bring binoculars and be patient; a still falcon on a distant fence post can look like nothing more than a lump until it turns its head. Anyone already tracking desert wildlife for a broader trip checklist might pair a falcon outing with a look for local rattlesnake species or a search for the region’s snake diversity, since both groups favor the same open, rocky terrain that falcons hunt over.
Four falcon species call Arizona home across the calendar year, each filling a different niche in the desert’s food web. The American kestrel handles the insects and small reptiles, the merlin arrives each winter to chase songbirds, the peregrine falcon claims the skies over cliffs and cities alike, and the prairie falcon rules the open grassland at low altitude. Learning to tell them apart by size, color, and hunting style turns any Arizona hike into a chance at a genuine raptor sighting.