gyrfalcon

• gerfalcon, gyr falcon, jerfalcon

From Old French gerfaucon (modern French gerfaut), with the first element probably from Old High German gīr (“vulture”) (whence the German Geier).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈdʒɜːfɔːlkən/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒɝˌfælkən/

gyrfalcon (plural gyrfalcons)

1. (obsolete) Any large falcon, especially as used to fly at herons.
   • 1668 June 22 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), John Dryden, An Evening’s Love, or The Mock-Astrologer. […], In the Savoy [London]: […] T[homas] N[ewcomb] for Henry Herringman, […], published 1671, →OCLC, Act IV, page 53:

     For I obſerve, that all vvomen of your condition are like the vvomen of the Play-houſe, ſtill Piquing at each other, vvho ſhall go the beſt Dreſt, and in the Richeſt Habits: till you vvork up one another by your high flying, as the Heron and Jerfalcon do.

2. Falco rusticolus, a large bird of prey that breeds on Arctic coasts and islands of North America, Europe and Asia.
   • 2007, Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road, Sceptre, published 2008, page 132:

     [T]he usurper Buljan ordered that his sukkah be erected on the donjon's roof, with its […] relative nearness to the stars, among which his sky-worshiping and uncircumcised ancestors still hunted with infallible gyrfalcons for celestial game.

• gyrfalcon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Falco rusticolus on Wikispecies.Wikispecies