3 Types of Falcons in Pennsylvania: A Field Guide to Every Species
October 9, 2026
The types of falcons in Pennsylvania range from a bird barely bigger than an American Robin to an aerial predator that dives faster than a race car on the highway. These raptors hunt with a precision that few other birds can match, and thanks to decades of conservation work, all three species are now easier to spot than they were a generation ago.
Falcons belong to a different family than hawks and eagles, and Pennsylvania sits within range of several species overall. Peregrines belong to the order Falconiformes, family Falconidae, which includes 39 species of falcons, and the peregrine is one of six falcons found in the United States, alongside the gyrfalcon, prairie falcon, merlin, American kestrel, and aplomado falcon. Of those six, only three call Pennsylvania home on a regular basis. Pennsylvania is home to three native falcon species, while two additional falcon species appear in state records only as rare vagrants.
This guide covers the American Kestrel, the Merlin, and the Peregrine Falcon — the three species you’re actually likely to see while hiking a ridge, watching a farm field, or looking up at a city skyline. Each one has its own size, coloring, and hunting style, and a bit of practice makes them easy to tell apart.
| Falcon Species | Length | Wingspan | Status in Pennsylvania |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Kestrel | 8.7–12.2 in | 20.1–24.0 in | Year-round resident, statewide |
| Merlin | 9.4–11.8 in | 20.9–26.8 in | Migrant; rare winter visitor in southeast PA |
| Peregrine Falcon | 14.2–19.3 in | 39.4–43.3 in | Uncommon breeding resident, formerly state-threatened |
American Kestrel
The American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) is the bird most people don’t realize is a falcon at all. It’s often called a “sparrow hawk,” and it’s the smallest and most colorful falcon in North America, which throws off a lot of casual birdwatchers expecting something larger and more intimidating. In Pennsylvania it’s roughly the size of an American Robin, yet it hunts with the same intensity as its bigger cousins.
Color is the fastest way to identify one. The American Kestrel has a rusty-red back, blue-gray wings, and a pair of distinctive black facial stripes, and the sexes don’t match each other the way most raptors do. The male has slate-blue wings, while the female has rufous wings along with dark banding on the tail, making this one of the few falcons where you can sex a bird from a distance without a scope.
Kestrels favor open country over forest. They’re drawn to places with few trees and short ground vegetation, which means they tend to like urban and suburban areas as much as farmland. Unlike red-tailed hawks or eagles, they rarely soar in wide circles. They do not usually soar, although the kestrel sometimes hovers with rapid wing strokes while scanning a field below for movement — a hunting style that’s almost as distinctive as their plumage.
They don’t leave for winter, either. In most of their range kestrels are year-round residents, and that includes Pennsylvania, where they live in all areas of the state all year long. Nesting habits are unusual for a falcon of this size: the American kestrel and peregrine falcon don’t build stick nests but use simpler scrape nests instead, often tucked into a cavity or ledge rather than a bulky platform.
Pro Tip: Scan telephone wires along rural roads in Pennsylvania during fall and winter. Kestrels perch conspicuously while hunting, making roadside power lines one of the most reliable places to spot one without a hike.
American Kestrels are highly adaptable hunters that feed primarily on insects, small rodents, and occasionally small birds. Their menu is broader than most people expect for a bird this size. Common prey includes:
- Grasshoppers and other large insects
- bees and other flying insects caught mid-air
- stink bugs, especially in late summer and fall
- ants and other ground-dwelling insects
- fireflies, picked off low vegetation at dusk
- Voles, mice, and occasionally small snakes
This flexible diet is part of why the species remains so widespread. A kestrel can survive on insects during a lean patch and switch to small vertebrates when the opportunity arises, which is a big advantage over more specialized raptors.
Merlin
The Merlin (Falco columbarius) is the falcon most Pennsylvania birdwatchers overlook simply because it’s uncommon and easy to mistake for something else. It’s larger and heavier than a kestrel but still small compared to a peregrine, and males typically have a streaky black to silver-grey back and wings, with a light-colored chest that can lean slightly orange. Coloring shifts by region and sex, so field guides are worth double-checking on this one.
Unlike the kestrel, the Merlin isn’t a year-round Pennsylvania resident for most of the state. Merlins are mostly spotted in Pennsylvania as they migrate through to their breeding grounds in Canada or their wintering grounds along the Atlantic Coast, though there are merlins who spend their winters in the southeast corner of the state. It’s right on the edge of their wintering range, so they may not be particularly common, but you can find them there if you know where to look during the colder months.
Spotting one takes patience. Merlins can be hard to spot because they’re typically perched high in the tree tops scanning for prey, or chasing down songbirds at top speed. A few identification cues make the search easier:
- Rapid, choppy wingbeats compared to a kestrel’s more relaxed flight
- A habit of ambushing prey rather than hovering over open fields
- A preference for perching high in dead trees along field edges
- A high, cackling “klee-klee-klee” call, mostly heard near a nest
Merlins don’t build their own homes. Like most falcons, Merlins don’t build their own nests, but instead reuse other birds’ abandoned homes, with favorites including nests built by crows, jays, hawks, or magpies. They rarely settle for the same site twice, which means a Merlin pair may nest in a completely different tree line every breeding season.
Their hunting style leans aggressive for their size. Despite its diminutive stature, this falcon is an incredibly fierce bird that uses surprise attacks to bring down its prey, and it has even been seen attacking trains and cars that enter its territory — one bird you don’t want to annoy or make nervous. Songbirds such as sparrows, and occasionally more colorful species like orange-hued orioles or red-headed woodpeckers, make up much of a Merlin’s diet during migration season.
Important Note: Merlins have also been documented working in pairs during a hunt. Mated pairs have been known to work cooperatively, with one driving prey right into the claws of their partner — a level of coordination rarely seen in solitary raptors.
Peregrine Falcon
The Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) is the falcon most people have actually heard of, and for good reason. Its common name is Peregrine Falcon, its scientific name is Falco peregrinus, and the name means “wandering falcon.” Few birds live up to a name better — this species nests on nearly every continent and has one of the widest natural ranges of any bird on Earth.
Speed is what defines it. With a vertical flight velocity of 242 mph (389 kph), the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world, and even in level pursuit nothing on the planet is faster than a Peregrine Falcon when it’s diving for prey, with recorded speeds up to 200 mph (320 km/h). That dive, known as a stoop, lets the bird strike prey mid-air with enough force to kill instantly.
Size and coloring set it apart from the other two species immediately. Adults measure 14 to 19 inches in length with a wingspan of 39 to 43 inches, and their plumage is slate-gray above with a pale, barred underside and a distinct black “helmet” marking on the head. That helmet pattern, combined with its size, makes the Peregrine Falcon nearly impossible to confuse with a kestrel or Merlin once you know what to look for.
Its diet is almost entirely other birds. Peregrine Falcons primarily eat other birds, with at least 450 different species documented as prey. They aren’t picky, taking almost anything they can catch, including ducks, gulls, pigeons, and songbirds — individuals as small as a hummingbird and as large as a Sandhill Crane have been recorded as kills. That range of prey size says a lot about how versatile a hunter this falcon really is.
Urban Pennsylvania has become an unlikely stronghold for the species. In Pennsylvania, urban environments like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have become nesting hotspots, where these falcons use the height and security of tall buildings to raise their young. Bridges, cathedral towers, and skyscraper ledges now substitute for the river cliffs the species originally nested on.
How the Peregrine Falcon Came Back From the Brink
The Peregrine Falcon’s Pennsylvania story is one of near-total loss followed by a genuine comeback. The native eastern breeding population was wiped out by the early 1960s, primarily due to the effects of DDT, and no nesting was recorded in Pennsylvania between about 1959 and 1987. The recovery that followed took decades of coordinated effort:
- 1970 — The American and Arctic peregrine falcon subspecies were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969.
- 1972 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT, removing the chemical primarily responsible for the species’ collapse.
- 1999 — The eastern U.S. breeding population was removed from the federal list of endangered species but remained on the Pennsylvania list.
- 2019 — Pennsylvania upgraded the species from endangered to threatened status as nesting pairs continued to increase.
- 2021 — The species was ultimately removed from Pennsylvania’s threatened species list altogether, joining the bald eagle and osprey as a full raptor recovery success story.
As of 2021, Pennsylvania had at least 73 pairs of peregrines, with 10 of those in the Pittsburgh region alone — a striking turnaround for a bird that had zero confirmed nests in the state for nearly three decades. According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the delisting followed more than 40 years of dedicated recovery work involving state and federal agencies alike.
Important Note: All falcon species in Pennsylvania are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, making it illegal to harm, capture, or disturb them without proper permits. This applies whether a bird is nesting on a cliff, a bridge, or a downtown skyscraper.
Even with the comeback, new hazards have emerged from the very structures peregrines now depend on. According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s peregrine falcon page, mortality risks for young birds now include building and window collisions and other hazards tied to nesting on human-made structures rather than natural cliffs. Groups such as the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy continue to monitor nest sites across the state to track how the population holds up over time.
For a look at how the recovery is playing out today, recent reporting from the Mon Valley Independent notes that the species’ rebound traces back to the founding of the Peregrine Fund and the DDT ban, both of which set the recovery in motion decades before the state delisting became official.
Spotting All Three Species in the Field
Telling these three falcons apart gets easier once size and habitat click into place. A small, colorful bird hovering over an open field or perched on a wire is almost always a kestrel. A slightly larger, streaky falcon chasing songbirds through tree cover in fall is likely a Merlin. And a large, dark-helmeted falcon folding into a dive above a bridge, cliff, or city skyline is a Peregrine Falcon — there’s really nothing else in the state that flies quite like it.
For anyone building a broader Pennsylvania birdwatching list, falcons are a good entry point into raptor identification generally, since all three species have distinct, memorable traits rather than subtle differences that require a field guide in hand. The Pennsylvania Game Commission’s own hawks and falcons overview is a useful starting point for comparing falcons against the state’s other birds of prey.
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and other ridge lookouts add another layer to the search each fall. Exploring urban skylines where Peregrines nest on skyscrapers or venturing to a raptor migration lookout during fall migration offers countless opportunities to witness falcons in action, often alongside hawks and eagles moving through on the same wind currents. Pennsylvania’s mix of farmland, river corridors, and city skylines means a falcon sighting is rarely more than a season away, no matter which corner of the state you call home.
If insects and small prey species caught your attention while reading about kestrel diets, Pennsylvania’s mosquito and spider populations are worth a closer look too, along with the state’s rabbit species that occasionally end up on a raptor’s menu. Together, these smaller residents make up the food web that keeps Pennsylvania’s falcons fed year-round.