The lanner falcon (Falco biarmicus) is a medium-sized bird of prey that breeds in Africa, southeast Europe and just into Asia. It prefers open habitat and is mainly resident, but some birds disperse more widely after the breeding season. A large falcon, it preys on birds and bats. Taxonomy and etymology The lanner falcon was described by the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck in 1825 under the current binomial name Falco biarmicus. The type locality is Caffraria and the Cape of Good Hope. Falco is Late Latin for a "falcon", from falx, falcis "sickle". The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus had used the specific epithet biarmicus for the bearded reedling and Temminck clearly believed that the word meant "bearded" but it is likely that Linnaeus was using the Latinized form for Bjarmaland, a district in northern Russia. The English word "lanner" is believed to come from the Old French lanier meaning "cowardly". The first recorded use of the word in English is from around 1400. This is presumably the oldest living hierofalcon species. Support for this assumption comes mainly from biogeography agreeing better with the confusing pattern of DNA sequence data in this case than in others. Nonetheless, there is rampant hybridization (see also perilanner) and incomplete lineage sorting which confounds the data to a massive extent; molecular studies with small sample sizes can simply not be expected to yield reliable conclusions in the entire hierofalcon group. In any case, the radiation of the entire living diversity of hierofalcons seems to have taken place in the Eemian interglacial at the start of the Late Pleistocene, a mere 130,000–115,000 years ago; the lanner falcons would thus represent the lineage that became isolated in sub-Saharan Africa at some time during the Riss glaciation (200,000 to 130,000 years ago) already. There are five recognised subspecies: F. b. biarmicus Temminck, 1825 – The nominate subspecies, ranges from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to southern Kenya south to South Africa F. b. feldeggii Schlegel, 1843 – Italy to Turkey, Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran F. b. tanypterus Schlegel, 1843 – northeastern Africa to Arabia, Israel and Iraq F. b. erlangeri Kleinschmidt, O., 1901 – northwestern Africa F. b. abyssinicus Neumann, 1904 – southern Mauritania to Ethiopia and Somalia south to Cameroon and northern Keny Some Ancient Egyptian deities, like Ra and Horus, where often represented as a man with the head of a Lanner Falcon. Their