Family:
Eleonora’s falcon is a large, angular falcon with a narrow tail, short legs, and long toes. It is like the hobby but can be distinguished from it by markings on its face. There are two colour morphs; pale and dark.
The pale morph is the most numerous and has dark, sooty-brown upperparts, rufous underparts with dark streaks, and finely barred paler underwings with black tips. On the head there is a dark cap and dark moustachial stripe typical of falcons. The throat is white, as is the cheek which is rounded whereas the hobby’s is hook-shaped. The hooked bill is grey with a black cere, and the legs and toes are yellow. The female is similar to the male but is larger.
The dark morph is dark all over and does not have the white on the face.
Try our interactive bird identifier
Eleonora’s falcons eat mainly large insects such as dragonflies, beetles, locusts, moths, and butterflies which are caught in flight, as well as small birds, bats, and lizards. It sometimes catches birds and imprisons them, before removing their flight feathers and feeding them to their young.
Eleonora’s falcons breed in scrub and on cliffs on islands in the Mediterranean, particularly around Greece, as well as Cyprus, the Canary Islands, Ibiza, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Algeria, and Morocco. It is a long distance migrant and spends the winter in Madagascar.
