Common name: Barbary falcon or tagarote
Scientific name: Falco pelegrinoides
Status: Threatened. Their populations have been improving in recent years, but in Fuerteventura there are less than a dozen pairs.
Habitat and distribution: Present throughout the Canary archipelago, it also occupies North Africa and the Middle East. It breeds preferably on sea cliffs, although in recent times they have begun to occupy some inland cliffs.
How to recognize it: Medium-sized falcon, very similar to the peregrine falcon. It has a slate gray back and a finely barred whitish breast. He wears a visible black mustache and a brown nape that he doesn’t always have. His flight is fast, powerful.
Curiosities: It is considered one of the rarest and most unknown European birds of prey. It is a bird of uncertain taxonomic status, since for many it would be nothing more than a subspecies of peregrine falcon. It feeds mainly on pigeons and Eurasian turtle doves, which it hunts in the air thanks to its vertiginous flight, reaching 300 kilometers per hour in some of its dives.
It currently breeds on all the islands of the archipelago. The reasons for the increase in their populations are due to their legal protection and greater availability of some of their prey.
