What Do Falcons Eat? Raptor Diet & Nutrition

What Do Falcons Eat in the Wild?

Falcons are bird specialists. In the wild they chiefly take other birds in flight—everything from larks and starlings up to doves, pigeons, and ducks, depending on the falcon’s size. Hawks cast a wider net: small mammals, birds, and reptiles all feature in a Red-tailed Hawk’s or Harris’s Hawk’s wild diet. Kestrels, the smallest falcons, live largely on insects and small rodents. What a raptor eats in the wild is the blueprint for what it should eat on your glove.

The common thread is whole animals, eaten whole. A wild raptor gets meat, organs, bone, fur, and feather in every meal, and that package—not muscle meat alone—is what raptor digestion is built around. It is the standard every captive diet is measured against. Feathers, fur, and bone are not garnish, either: bone carries the calcium a meat-only meal lacks, and the indigestible remainder becomes the casting a healthy raptor throws daily.

What Do Falconry Birds Eat?

Falconry birds eat whole vertebrate prey: mice, rats, day-old chicks, quail, and pigeon are the staples. Commercially raised, frozen-then-thawed food animals are the norm—captive-bred prey carries far less disease risk than wild-caught prey, which can also bring environmental toxins with it.

Among whole prey, mature mice and rats are about as nutritionally complete as a single food item gets. Day-old chicks are a widely used staple with one rule attached: feed them yolk and all—removing the yolk sac strips out much of the nutrition. Variety across prey types covers the gaps any single item leaves. Falconers also hold back tidbits—small, lean pieces cut from the same ration—as training currency; in falconry, food is both nutrition and the entire reward system, which is why diet and training are impossible to separate.

Common Food Types

Most falconers build the freezer around a rotation of a few staples. Each has a role—and the mix, not any single item, is what makes the diet complete:

What Do Peregrine Falcons Eat?

Wild peregrine falcons prey almost exclusively on other birds—over 1,500 prey species have been documented worldwide. Pigeons, shorebirds, waterfowl, songbirds, and even bats make up the bulk of the diet, taken in flight, with medium-sized birds the mainstay.

A falconry peregrine eats what other captive falcons eat: whole birds and bird-like prey, with quail and clean-sourced pigeon closest to its natural diet, plus day-old chicks and rodents in rotation. On hunting days, feeding on or after the kill becomes part of the daily ration—the same arithmetic as for any other raptor. What a peregrine should not eat follows the general rules further down this page: no wild-caught mystery prey, no meat-only shortcuts.

Learn more about the peregrine falcon in falconry

Feeding Differences Between Species

Species shapes the menu at the margins. Falcons lean toward bird prey, so quail and pigeon sit closest to what they evolved eating. Red-tailed Hawks in falconry are typically fed whole prey such as quail, mice, rats, and day-old chicks, and take rabbits and squirrels in the field. Kestrels and other very small raptors burn hottest of all—the smallest eat the equivalent of a fifth to a quarter of their body weight every day. Match the freezer to the field, too: a hawk that hunts rabbits can eat rabbit, while a longwing flown at birds does best with birds in the rotation.

Size matters more than species, though. The feeding percentages in the next section scale by body weight, and the practical differences—how much casting, how large the bone, how rich the food—follow from the bird in front of you rather than from the field guide. When in doubt, feed variety and watch the response.

How Much Should You Feed?

Veterinary reference figures scale daily intake by body size: raptors of 100-200 g eat roughly 20-25% of their body weight per day, birds of 200-800 g eat around 15%, birds of 800 g to 7 kg eat 6-10%, and giants above 7 kg eat about 3.5%. A kestrel is a furnace; an eagle is a slow burner. The arithmetic is worth doing once: a 1,000-gram hawk at 6-10% is 60-100 g of food a day.

Treat those as maintenance ballparks, not prescriptions. In practice, most falconry birds in the common hawk-and-falcon size range settle around 5-10% of body weight per day—more on hunting days, less on rest days—adjusted constantly against the scale and the bird’s response. Weigh the bird at the same time every day and weigh the food as well—consistent numbers are what make the percentages usable at all.

Casting, Gorge Days & Supplements

Casting—the fur, feather, and bone a raptor cannot digest—is not waste; it is part of the meal. The bird regurgitates it as a compact pellet, and regular, well-formed castings are a daily health signal experienced falconers watch closely. Provide casting material regularly, but avoid overly large-boned prey, which risks obstructing the digestive tract. Weigh the bird after it has cast, not before: a casting still inside is weight on the scale.

Many falconers also plan occasional gorge days—letting the bird eat its absolute fill, traditionally followed by a lighter day—echoing the feast-and-fast rhythm of wild hunting; used sparingly and deliberately, it is a tool rather than a routine. As for supplements: a varied whole-prey diet needs little help, but incomplete diets do. Fish-heavy diets call for added thiamine (30-35 mg per kg of feed) and vitamin E (100 mg per kg), and diets built on organ or muscle meat need added calcium—roughly 10 g of calcium carbonate per kg of meat—to avoid dangerous imbalances.

What Never to Feed a Raptor

Most feeding problems are avoidable. Keep the following off the menu—each one causes real harm:

Sourcing & Storing Food

Falconers commonly buy frozen whole prey—chicks, quail, rodents—in bulk from the specialist suppliers that also serve raptor keepers, zoos, and reptile owners, and many clubs share supplier lists or split orders. Captive-bred, purpose-raised food animals are the standard; whatever the source, you want known origin and clean handling.

Storage is simple discipline: keep a dedicated raptor freezer, bag portions by feeding size, and thaw each day’s ration slowly in the refrigerator—never in warm water. Some falconers go a step further and raise their own quail or rodents for complete control over the supply chain. Label bags with contents and date so rotation stays effortless.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Feed whole prey, feed variety, and feed by weight rather than by guesswork. Rotated staples—quail, day-old chicks, mice, rats, clean pigeon—cover a raptor’s needs; the percentages give you a starting ration; the scale and the bird’s response tell you what tomorrow’s should be.

Diet and weight management are one subject in falconry, not two. Log every feeding—food type, amount, and next-day weight—in the FalconryLab app or a notebook, and the patterns appear within weeks. Your bird’s health lives in those entries.