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.
Fastest propeller-driven aircraft
The FAI record for the fastest piston-powered aircraft over a long-distance circuit is the 2000-km record of set on 22 May 1948 by Jacqueline Cochran in a P-51C. (She also holds the 100-km record of 755.67 km/hr, set in December 1947.) Higher speed records exist; some are unofficial and some were officially-timed one-way trips aided by tailwinds. Examples of the latter: a B-29 averaged from Burbank to Floyd Bennett Field (3957 km in 5.455 hours) on 11 December 1945, and Joe DeBona averaged from Los Angeles LAX to New York Idlewild (3981 km (2472mi) in 4.405 hours) in a P-51 on 30 March 1954. On September 12, 2003, the modified P-51 "Dago Red", piloted by Skip Holm, averaged 507.105mph (816.1 kph) during the 6 lap (c.50 miles) Reno Air Races Friday Gold Race.