The falcon's stoop, or high speed dive, has fascinated birdwatchers and scientists for hundreds of years.

"Detailed descriptions of the peregrine's dive date back centuries," Robin Mills, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said.

Like a bullet: a peregrine falcon stoops after its prey, Credit:www.alamy.com

More recently, researchers have studied how the birds achieve superlative speeds.

The birds fold their wings to the side, a pose that gives their bodies the aerodynamics of a bullet. Their feathers flare up like fins to fine-tune their descent.