Peregrine Falcon spotting!

I was greeted with 2 surprises this morning upon looking out my window:

1) SNOW!!! (finally)
2) a Peregrine Falcon was on my neighbors roof with a pigeon in its clutches. The roof is even with my window, and was my first experience with a falcon in this city. I went to take a picture, glanced down to change the settings on my camera, looked up and it was gone.

a pleasant reminder of nature this friday january morning!

That's very cool. I am curious how big the falcon was in relation to the pigeon.

we saw one a while back too...

linky

The pigeon was at least 1/3 the size of the falcon. It tried to get away but only made it as far as the roof ledge gutter when the falcon snatched him again.

Im worried the pigeon may be my neighbors who flies them in circles above the block! (Washington ave and Dean street) Food chain in action.

Several in Green-Wood Cemetery...Hal, about 2.5 times the size of today's prey. Much smaller than the red tailed hawks in Green-Wood and PP.

More hawks and falcons, less pigeons. Darwinism at its best.

I can only identify 2 kinds of birds: pigeons and not-pigeons.

EDIT: I can also distinguish many other domesticated fowl such as ducks, turkeys, geese, quail, pheasants, etc, but only by taste.

i saw a falson chowing down on a pigeon in my back yard about a year ago.
one of the coolest things thats happend to me so far in prospect hieghts.

I've seen a peregrine circling around the taller towers near the Wmsburg Bank building at Atlantic/Pacific, a number of times. They like to nest on taller buildings (as surrogates for cliffs), and I wondered if they used those buildings, ever. Though they do roam quite a bit.

This is a good season for hawks, while it's cold and everyone's hungry: this afternoon at 7th and Park I saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk take a dive at a flock of starlings. It missed.

Carnivore wrote: I can only identify 2 kinds of birds: pigeons and not-pigeons.

EDIT: I can also distinguish many other domesticated fowl such as ducks, turkeys, geese, quail, pheasants, etc, but only by taste.

Isn't there a joke about a schoolteacher teaching a kid about categories and asking him to say how many different kinds of birds he can name.
"Two," he says.
"Well," the teacher thinks, "that's a start."
"OK, name two kinds of birds," says the teacher.
"Live ones and dead ones.:

Then again, maybe this was a story from a friend's mother who used to work as a teacher.

my partner has seen falcons on the statues on the park side of grand army plaza too.

Carnivore wrote: I can only identify 2 kinds of birds: pigeons and not-pigeons.

I love all manner of raptor. They are simply delicious, although they make markedly unreliable familiars, not like waterfoul or gamebird.

Karl the Druid wrote: [quote=Carnivore]I can only identify 2 kinds of birds: pigeons and not-pigeons.

I love all manner of raptor. They are simply delicious, although they make markedly unreliable familiars, not like waterfoul or gamebird.

omigod, the Walton Ford "Tigers of Wrath" show at the Brooklyn Museum has mindblowing enormous precision watercolors of birds and beasts. There's one of a rhino-sized starling getting gift bugs and fruits from normal-sized birds of many kinds. The parrot is clutching an olive (or perhaps a plum) in its claw.
Uh, just like the falcons and hawks in real life.
:-'

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/tigers_of_wrath/

pitu wrote: [quote=Karl the Druid][quote=Carnivore]I can only identify 2 kinds of birds: pigeons and not-pigeons.

I love all manner of raptor. They are simply delicious, although they make markedly unreliable familiars, not like waterfoul or gamebird.

omigod, the Walton Ford "Tigers of Wrath" show at the Brooklyn Museum has mindblowing enormous precision watercolors of birds and beasts. There's one of a rhino-sized starling getting gift bugs and fruits from normal-sized birds of many kinds. The parrot is clutching an olive (or perhaps a plum) in its claw.
Uh, just like the falcons and hawks in real life.
:-'

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/tigers_of_wrath/
I loved that exhibit! My favorite was the one with all the individual paintings of different kinds of birds that together actually composed a picture of an elephant.

Mmmmmm, ele-tur-durk-en.