A bird diving at 200 miles per hour sounds like fiction, but it happens regularly over Virginia’s cliffs, bridges, and even downtown skyscrapers. The state hosts three falcon species on a regular basis, and each one hunts, nests, and travels in a completely different way. Understanding the types of falcons in Virginia means learning to tell apart a farmland hunter, a fast-moving migrant, and a former endangered species now nesting on office towers.
Falcons differ from Virginia’s hawks and eagles in a few key ways. They kill prey with their beaks instead of their talons, and their long, pointed wings make them noticeably faster in open-air pursuits. This guide covers the three falcons that call Virginia home on a yearly basis: the American Kestrel, the Merlin, and the Peregrine Falcon.
| Species | Approximate Weight | Typical Habitat | Best Time to Spot |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Kestrel | 2.8–5.8 oz | Open fields, farmland, roadsides | Year-round |
| Merlin | 4.4–10.6 oz | Coastlines, open fields, urban parks | Fall and spring migration |
| Peregrine Falcon | 12–53 oz | Cliffs, bridges, city buildings | Year-round in urban areas, migration along the coast |
1. American Kestrel
The American kestrel (Falco sparverius) is the smallest falcon in Virginia and is roughly the size of an American Robin. It’s also the most common and widespread falcon in Virginia, living in a wide range of habitats across the state. Along with the peregrine falcon, the kestrel is one of two species that nest in Virginia, and populations remain present throughout the year.
Males and females look noticeably different. According to Badgerland Birding, males have a rusty colored back as well as a lighter rusty colored underside, with blue on their wings and the top of their head and black markings near their eye. Females carry a different pattern, since females are lighter overall with rusty orange barring on their wings, back, and tail. Both sexes show black barring on their back, and two black stripes on the face.
Kestrels favor open country. They’re often perched on fence posts and telephone wires, especially around farmland, and they have a distinctive hunting trick: kestrels can position their body into the wind and hover in place, scanning the ground below. Their diet leans heavily on insects, since they primarily feed on insects and invertebrates like grasshoppers, beetles, cicadas, dragonflies, moths and spiders. Those beetles and moth caterpillars make up a large share of what a kestrel eats in a given season.
Their small size is deceptive. Kestrels are fierce predators that can take down other birds as big or bigger than they are, such as Northern Flickers. For nesting, they don’t build their own structures. Instead, American Kestrels are resourceful nesters, seeking out cavities in trees, old woodpecker holes, or even man-made nest boxes provided by enthusiasts. Virginia’s abundant woodpeckers unintentionally supply much of that housing stock.
Pro Tip: American kestrels have declined steadily across much of their range, and installing a properly sized nest box in an open field or along a farm edge can give local pairs a place to raise young.
2. Merlin
The Merlin is a compact, fast-flying falcon that shows up in Virginia mostly during migration. Two subspecies are documented in the state: the taiga merlin and the prairie merlin. The taiga merlin measures approximately 11 to 13 inches long and has a wingspan of 23 to 26 inches, with a fairly dark appearance, with dark gray backs and a buff-colored underside. For years, biologists assumed this bird only passed through, since it was assumed that Taiga merlins did not nest in Virginia, as their main nesting locations are in Alaska and Canada—though that pattern has since started to shift, with a small number now nesting in the state’s southwestern region.
The prairie merlin is the rarer of the two subspecies in Virginia. It’s a similar size to taiga merlins but are lighter-colored, with males having blueish-gray backs and females being lighter gray, and both also have whiteish-colored undersides with reddish-brown markings. Sightings are uncommon, since prairie merlins are not common in Virginia but may sometimes migrate as far as the state during the winter months when traveling from their northern nesting sites in Alaska and Canada.
Timing matters most for spotting a Merlin. In Virginia, Merlins are most often seen during fall and spring migrations, particularly along coastlines and open fields, with some individuals overwintering in the state, especially in urban parks and suburban areas with abundant prey. Courtship is dramatic, since their courtship behavior is aerial, involving high-speed chases and acrobatic dives, and once paired, the female lays 4 to 5 eggs, with incubation lasting about a month.
Merlins skip nest-building entirely. Like most falcons, Merlins don’t build their own nests, but instead reuse other birds’ abandoned homes, with favorites being nests built by crows, jays, hawks, or magpies. They rarely settle into the same spot twice, since it’s also rare for them to reuse the same nests, instead opting to locate a new one each breeding season. Historically, this falcon had a place in falconry, too: Merlins were used by falconers throughout history, particularly during the Middle Ages, when they were known as the “lady’s hawk,” and despite their relatively small size, they are bold predators capable of taking prey their own size in spectacular mid-air pursuits.
Key Insight: Because Merlins hunt over open water and coastal marshes as often as farmland, birders scanning Virginia’s shorebird and waterfowl habitats during September and October have some of the best odds of a sighting.
3. Peregrine Falcon
The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) is the falcon most Virginians recognize, partly because of its speed and partly because of its comeback story. According to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR), the peregrine falcon has long captured our imagination as a hunter of the skies, stooping on its avian prey at speeds of up to 200 mph. Visually, it’s striking: it has a dark back, wings, head, and neck, with a light underside marked by dark barring and noticeable bright yellow legs, along with dark facial markings some birders call “sideburns.”
Historically, peregrines nested almost exclusively in Virginia’s mountains. Peregrine falcons were concentrated in the Blue Ridge and mountains in Appalachia, where ridges provided topographic relief and updrafts for flights from the nest to hunt other birds, and nests were typically scraped into a patch of gravel on a cliff ledge. That population collapsed after World War II.
As DWR explains, the widespread use of organochlorine pesticides such as DDT, combined with human disturbance, contributed to abrupt and widespread population declines, since DDT led to the bioaccumulation of toxic residues in prey species, contaminating the falcons and reducing the viability of their eggs. The species was federally listed as endangered in 1970.
Recovery took decades of hands-on work. Virginia biologists used a technique called hacking, in which chicks are placed into a protective box at a release site, food is provided daily while interactions with humans are kept to an absolute minimum, and ten to 15 days later, once the young falcons can fly, the box is opened and the birds released, with food provided until they can hunt successfully. The approach worked well enough that the species was removed from the federal endangered species list in 1999, though it remains protected as a State Threatened species in Virginia today.
Important Note: Because falcons have not recovered as a nesting population in their historic mountainous range within Virginia, they remain listed as a Threatened Species under Virginia’s Endangered Species Act and regulations enacted by DWR, disturbing an active nest site can carry legal consequences, even on private land.
Richmond’s falcons are the state’s best-known pair. Since a Dominion Power reintroduction effort began in 2000, peregrines have nested in the state capital for more than two decades, and since 2006 the birds have nested on the west tower of the Riverfront Plaza, with the pair producing 33 eggs and 26 chicks between 2003 and 2010, fifteen of which successfully fledged in Richmond. Progress has spread beyond the city, too. DWR reported that in 2021 there were 29 documented peregrine nesting sites in Virginia, of which five were located in the mountains, an all-time modern high and a promising sign of the continued expansion of the population into its former breeding range.
Coastal Virginia still holds the bulk of the state’s breeding pairs. In Virginia, reintroduced peregrines nest on bridges, buildings and other artificial structures in the Coastal Plain, and in recent years this segment of the population has hovered between 20 and 25 pairs. The mountains have been slower to recover, though not without progress: as of the year 2000, only one pair was known to be nesting on a natural cliff, at Shenandoah National Park, where peregrines continue to nest to this day.
Diet-wise, peregrines aren’t picky. Research compiled by Bird Watching HQ notes that peregrine falcons primarily eat other birds, with at least 450 different types documented as their prey, and they take almost anything they can catch, including ducks, gulls, pigeons, and songbirds. Prey size varies wildly, since these raptors have been observed killing individuals as small as a hummingbird, and as large as a Sandhill Crane, and when they are not eating birds, it’s common for these birds of prey to hunt bats.
A peregrine hunting over the Chesapeake Bay is just as likely to target a diving duck as it is a songbird, or even something as small as a hummingbird passing through on migration. They’re also quiet birds outside the nest, since peregrines make little noise except around their nesting site, where the alarm call sounds like “kack-kack-kack-kack”.
Virginia’s three resident falcons cover very different niches, from the kestrel’s insect-heavy farmland diet to the peregrine’s bird-hunting dives over city skylines. Spotting all three in a single year is realistic for a patient birder: check fence lines and open fields for kestrels in summer, scan the coast during fall migration for Merlins, and watch downtown bridges or Shenandoah’s cliffs for peregrines.
Anyone comparing notes across state lines might also find it useful to look at the falcon species documented in Ohio, several of which overlap with Virginia’s migratory visitors. For birders building out a broader Virginia checklist, the state’s mix of raptors, woodland species, and wetland birds offers plenty to track well beyond falcons alone.