Fastest member of the Animal Kingdom

I spotted a bird of prey on the telephone pole near my property line.  By using reference books I identified it as the Peregrine Falcon.  I'd never seen this bird before and I'd never heard of the name.


 I found some really shocking facts when I completed my research on this Falcon:




1) The Smithsonian Institue declared it the "fastest member of the Animal Kingdom".  It was clocked in NYC swooping down off building on some prey at more than 202 MPH !   The bird I just looked at out my window is the fastest?  Holy smokes.  Who would think they'd see that from their living room window?

2)  They feast almost exclusively on medium sized birds.  They grab the birds by the wings mid-air then land on the ground and rip their prey to shreds.  They will eat also an occassional insect when hungry enough. 

3)  They mate for life.  The female is 30% bigger than the male.  They live mainly in cliff edges but are increasingly found in the city making a home on tall buildings.  These birds live on the west coast from Alaska to Mexico.  In California they spend spring and summer in the Sierras and move to the desert and foothills during fall and winter. 

4) The Peregrine Falcon was an Endangered Species until 1999.  The ban of DDT in the 70's has helped them recover. Supposedly they are very popular in the sport of Falconry, particularly because of their speed.  In 2004, Professional Falconists were briefly allowed to take a limited numbers of Falcons from the wild for the first time because the population has recovered so well.

All this, just because I casually glanced outside my window. 
The next thing I knew, the bird was gone.