List of birds by flight speed
This is a list of the fastest flying birds in the world. A bird's velocity is necessarily variable; a hunting bird will reach much greater speeds while diving to catch prey than when gliding. The bird with the greatest airspeed velocity is the Peregrine falcon, able to exceed 321.8 km/h (200 mph) in its hunting dives. The greatest self-powered horizontal speed is achieved by Homing Racing Pigeons. They can fly 1100 km (700 miles) in a single day, and they have been recorded flying at 177 km/h (110 miles per hour), making them the birds with the fastest speed ever recorded on a self-powered flight, and the fastest endurance flight.
Fairey Delta 2
The Fairey Delta 2 is the first jet aircraft to exceed 1000 mph in level flight, flying faster than the sun moves across the sky. On 10 March 1956, it set a new world speed record of 1,132 mph during a test flight. The Delta 2 held the absolute World Air Speed Record for over a year. It continued to be used for test flights, and was allocated to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) in 1958.