This bird is found in eastern Europe and Asia although its numbers are dwindling rapidly due to habitat loss and hunting.

It is a regular wanderer to western Europe, and in August 2004 a red-footed falcon was found in North America for the first time on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

They appear morphologically somewhat intermediate between kestrels and hobbies and DNA sequence data has been unable to further resolve this question, mainly due to lack of comprehensive sampling.

The female has a grey back and wings, orange head and underparts, and a white face with black eye stripe and moustaches.

The red-footed falcon also breeds irregularly in the Czech Republic and in the Baltic States, occasionally also in Germany.

In Asia, the breeding occurrences run in a relatively narrow band somewhat south of the taiga eastwards to the upper Lena, where they touch the range of the sister species Falco amurensis east of the Baikal.

It runs along the north slope of the Altai and then westward follows the transition of open pine forests into the treeless steppe areas of Central Asia.

According to the researchers, the red-footed falcon is officially listed as near-threatened, due to the drastic breeding population decline of the past decades.

The researchers' main focus was on understanding the relationship between landscape scale habitat variables and red-footed falcon presence.

[10] Near the village of Melenci (Vojvodina, northern Serbia) there were 22 red-footed falcon nests in 1991 in which offspring had been successfully brought up.

Females participated more times in the defence of the nest than males, yet the ratios of the studied types of behaviour (alarm, repellence, attack) did not differ between the sexes.

The distribution of the reaction types of the parent birds to disturbance was significantly different in the periods of incubation, hatching and nestling, respectively.

[11] The survey of population size and distribution of red-footed falcons proceeded in June–July 2000 and 2001 respectively, ten years after the first census (1990 and 1991).

Even if the marked fluctuations observed are not considered, the red-footed falcon population breeding in Voivodina shows a declining tendency.

[13] The red-footed falcon tends to reside in typical steppe type habitats ranging from Eastern Europe to Lake Baikal in Central Asia.

[15] A major impact on the red footed falcon's population is loss and degradation of natural nest sites.

Rooks and rookeries are regularly attacked, by shooting into the nests, killing birds and cutting down the trees they were living in for the wood.

There is also an increased mortality caused by electrocution due to the bird's habit of sitting perched on power lines.

[citation needed] The global population of red-footed falcon is estimated to be between 300,000-800,000 individuals, with 26,000 to 39,000 pairs in Europe.

[10] A conservation program, which was funded by the EU's LIFE Nature financial instrument, was initiated on January 1, 2006 with the goal of increasing and maintaining the breeding population of the species in Hungary and western Romania.

[10] It's pretty common for the birds to be preyed upon by martens or other mammalian predators during incubation or during the nestling state, even in the artificial colonies.

One of the reasons of red-footed falcon decline is the collapse of the rook population due to drastic pest control measures.

Based on previous experience and information from stakeholders, a draft "corvus management plan" will be prepared to handle the conflict situations caused by rooks.

[16] Future conservation efforts proposed include continuing to conduct regular surveys throughout the area.

Red-footed falcons are known to use artificial colonies, therefore, they can be a useful mid-term conservation tool to prevent their population from fragmenting.