As always, I say that this post is not for the faint hearted.
This is how nature controls the bird populations and the Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) is one of my favorites, as it is also the fastest diving bird in the world. By diving, I mean that it hovers high up in the sky and when it sees a target, then it folds its wings to dive down at an astonishing speed. His dive is measured at approximately 350kmp, and no other bird can dive that fast, not even eagles or other birds of prey. There seems to be some confusion about the total diving speed of the peregrine, as some other sites reckon that he dives at a speed of 380kmp.
I will spare you the gory parts, as the Peregrine started to strip the feathers of the young bird and then he opened it up. Not too nice to see, but nature's wildlife at its best. I have now done quite a few posts about predator birds with prey, but every time that I get this guy. He just fascinates me. When I hear his loud call then I instinctively know that he has prey, and I also know the tree where he normally sits.
Come and see.
Like I said, the prey is a young bird.
Wikipedia has a great list of birds' flying speeds. Below, I will only post a sample about the peregrine's diving speed.
This is a list of the average and fastest flight speeds achieved by birds. A bird's velocity is necessarily variable; a hunting bird will reach much greater speeds while diving to catch prey than when flying horizontally. The bird that can achieve the greatest speed is the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), able to exceed 320 km/h (200 mph) in its dives.
I think that he gave me some sort of a glance.
I got him on another occasion again, recently, and I will also do a post about the peregrine with prey. Not a young bird this time, but rather one of the local racing pigeons. Every time that he catches one of the pigeons he drops the carcass after he has had his meal, and then I collect the rings on the pigeons' legs. We dropped the rings at the local vet to contact the owners of the pigeons.
I thought to also include the peregrine that I got on the other occasion, but I decided to rather keep it for another post. We are blessed with many birds of prey in our area, and another famous specie is the African Fish Eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer) that I have also posted a few times. We love nature and its wildlife, especially here in South Africa, and we are always on the lookout for other bird species to get on camera.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
Until next time, cheers!
