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
On 10 March 1956, the Fairey Delta 2 broke the World Air Speed Record, raising it to 1,132 mph (1,811 km/h) or Mach 1.73. This achievement exceeded the prior recorded airspeed record by 310 mph, or 37 per cent; never before had the record ever been raised by such a vast margin. The achievement had also made the Fairey Delta 2 the first jet aircraft to exceed 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h) in level flight. At this speed, when flying westward the aircraft flies faster than the apparent motion of the sun, making the sun appear to move backwards in the sky; Peter Twiss thus became the first man to fly faster than the rotation of the earth.