Fast, beautiful, mates for life: why I am voting peregrine in Australia’s bird of the year 2023 | Imogen Dewey

My favourite bird, the fastest in the world, calls to something in me

• The Australian bird of the year poll launches on 25 September 2023
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The peregrine is the fastest animal in the world. It drops on its prey from above, a 300km/h shard of death. This path, sky to ground, is called a hunting line - a phrase I first saw in JA Baker's The Peregrine - my favourite book (also Werner Herzog's, turns out), probably my favourite possession. Book and bird have been indistinguishable to me since: a talisman of what is beautiful and wild.

They are killers," Baker wrote in 1967. That is what they are for." To find one, look up. See it, as he did, remote as a star ... a small dark knuckle in the flawless sky". Before it drops:

He seemed to split in two, his body shooting off like an arrow from the tight-strung bow of his wings. There was an unholy impetus in his falling, as though he had been hurled from the sky. It was hard to believe, afterwards, that it had happened at all.