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.
Lepidoptera
Some species of butterflies can reach fast speeds, such as the southern dart, which can go as fast as 48.4 km/h. Sphingids are some of the fastest flying insects, some are capable of flying at over 50 km/h (30 mi/h), having a wingspan of 35–150 mm. In some species, sometimes a gliding component to their flight exists. Flight occurs either as hovering, or as forward or backward motion. In butterfly and moth species, such as hawk moths, hovering is important as they need to maintain a certain stability over flowers when feeding on the nectar.