Peregrine Falcons, Do a Little Dance 2/26/25
This morning I was thinking it had been a long time since I went to see our resident Peregrines at Devil’s Slide. When I got there, the female was hanging out on the cliff but the male was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t seem very interested in moving around or doing much for quite a while. Then the male showed up and she left her perch immediately and they both flew into the cave/nest area for a few minutes. They came back out, she went to a perch a bit farther away and he went to a perch very far away. They didn’t do much for a while, and we started to get into the time when the rocks and ground heated up a bit too much and heat distortion was starting to make photography difficult.
And then the male came over to … well … the pictures say it all. I was lucky that I was able to get enough mostly-clear shots among the distorted shots to properly “paint the picture”. I was tempted to make the last photo the first one because I really liked how that one came out. But I eventually decided keeping them chronological told the story best. I have some flight and portrait shots that I’ll post later.
I was intrigued to see the male was banded. I imagine banding these guys is quite the challenge …. UPDATE: I submitted the band data to USGS and got the certificate which I’ve added at the end of the photos.
