The Peregrine Falcon is a
cosmopolitan bird of prey in the family
Falconidae. The Peregrine reaches speeds of over 320 km/h (200 mph) during its characteristic hunting stoop, making it the fastest extant member of the animal kingdom. The world's most widespread bird of prey, it can be found nearly everywhere on Earth, except extreme polar regions, very high mountains, and most tropical rainforests; the only major ice-free landmass from which it is entirely absent is New Zealand. While its diet consists almost exclusively of medium-sized birds, the Peregrine Falcon will occasionally hunt small mammals, small reptiles or even insects. Reaching sexual maturity at one year, it mates for life and nests in a
scrape, normally on cliff edges or, in recent times, on tall human-made structures. The Peregrine Falcon became an endangered species in many areas due to the use of pesticides, especially
DDT. Since the ban on DDT from the beginning of the 1970s, the populations recovered, supported by large scale protection of nesting places and releases to the wild. (more...)
... that British stage-actor Kyrle Bellew(pictured) was accused of being
Mrs. Leslie Carter's lover at her 1889 divorce trial?
... that the State of Pennsylvania and its twin sister, the State of Delaware, were both the first
steamboats to make a live radio broadcast and to show movies?
... that
Derrida's 1974 text Glas is printed in two columns, one commenting on
Hegel and the other on
Genet, woven around and separated by "marginalia, supplementary comments, [and] lengthy quotations"?
1374 – One of the first major outbreaks of dancing mania, wherein crowds of people
danced themselves to exhaustion, took place in
Aachen (present-day Germany), before spreading to other cities and countries.
Trails of
Martiandust devils, which appear as dark streaks on the light surface, as seen by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Dust devils are strong, well-formed, and relatively long-lived
whirlwinds that can form when hot air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler,
low-pressure air above it. On Mars, dust devils have unexpectedly cleaned the
solar panels of the
Mars rovers.
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