Peregrine Sighting!

[furtech]

Very exciting animal sighting on a recent wash-walk: I saw my first wild peregrine falcon! I've seen a number of these in the past, but always under somewhat artificial conditions: the released birds in Downtown L.A. (you can often hear the young screeching in that area) and when I was involved in falconry years ago.

We were walking near Two Rivers (our name for a section of the Santa Clara River where two forks merge) and I saw a large falconiform bird soaring around us. Roz thought it could be a Prairie Falcon (they've been in the area), but when it circled around us, it had a light belly/wing underside.



The bird was very accommodating, too: she let us walk within about fifty yards of it before flying off, several times. ("She" because she was huge-- about the size of a raven!)


Here's the whole set

I love my camera! (<--Fuji F200 EXR) Even though the bird was still some distance away, the camera's high resolution and IS allowed me to get pictures clear enough to confirm that this was, indeed, a peregrine. You can even see that it is banded!

The local ravens were NOT happy: a group of them perched on the tip-top branches of a bare tree and *stared* at their new neighbor. The reason they weren't haranguing the bird of prey could be explained by an earlier occurrence: a raven was harassing the falcon when suddenly the falcon did a loop in the air and nearly grabbed a hunk of tail feathers!

Comments

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

I got really lucky at one point and managed to see a pair of peregrines hunting along a river while I was out fishing with a bunch of Girl Scouts. Kids didn't catch any fish, but thought this was the BEST field trip we'd ever been on. It was complete chance to see them too since fishing was the substitute activity. I was supposed to take them on a 5 mile hike, but it was forecast to be over 100 that day with 80%+ humidity. So took them fishing instead and got to see the falcons.