Last night I found myself with a chance to go see the peregrines in person, in the evening when the UV was far less of an issue and when I hoped the traffic wouldn’t be horrible even if I couldn’t use the carpool lane on the freeway: originally, Michelle was going to go with me, but that hadn’t worked out. It was 6:45, it was a half hour away, the San Jose library would close at 8–I just suddenly made the decision to go anyway. I grabbed my keys and took off.
I had been told the 8th floor there was a good viewing area, and I was fortunate to find a parking spot on the street a little past the library in a handicapped zone. Walking inside, I had no idea how to find what where; the security guard’s face lit up when I told him why I wanted to find my way upstairs. Yes! The falcons!
From the upper corner, I got a good view of the side of City Hall: the nestbox, the louvers above the windows to the side starting just below it, the hallway lights turned off on the two top floors for the fledglings’ sakes. And best of all, the peregrines.
A parent was up there near the top, identifiable by its white chest so tiny in the distance. I had binoculars, not a great pair, but something, at least. Two babies over there, one over that-a-way. Clara (I was told later it was) then went soaring slowly around and around City Hall, floating effortlessly in the wind currents, taking her time, surfing the skies.
There were far fewer details than what I could have seen looking at the cam on the computer at home, but to see them alive and in person!
So I stayed. I saw a young’un taking off and flapflapflapping furiously, trying to gain altitude, finally getting high enough to ride the currents a moment too but perhaps too tired from all the energy expenditure to keep at it long. Later, one running the ledge when Mom arrived and two more flying over from the louver to join in. One, however, stayed on the louver, their latest favorite place. Having claimed the most perfect spot, it wasn’t giving it up.
There are three babies up there–I wish you could embiggen this. I saw their huge wings outstretched and then folding in again, again and again.
I saw, once the Momma-mobbing was over, what looked like one juvie on her return ever so gently missing and hitting the wall above the louver, wings outstretched, before settling down with her siblings. Like this, (thank you, Eric!) which happened a day or two earlier; some of them are still working on their landing gear.
Veer, however, is quite the flyer. He’s been practicing the prey handoff thing, and actually, after I wrote the other day that that was something they had yet to learn, I got a report that he had actually done it for the first time that very night. He had received a large pigeon in a handoff from Clara, they flew together to the top of another building, and then when she went to fly off to the other babies, it was, Hey, don’t leave me! He took off after her.
Without the pigeon. Making excuses. Mom! I don’t know how to cook this thing, here, you do it!
Clara noticed, swooped back, collected it and reinstated the dinner menu, and one can just picture the eye-rolling to go with the wing-rolling.
I loved Eric’s picture of Clara above while some of the juvies played at hand-it-over. If you mouse over it and see the comments, you’ll understand, given the end of yesterday’s post, why I guffawed out loud when I read them.
The whole thing was absolutely thrilling. I was so close. There were quiet moments, with a baby pancaked here and others sitting there and Clara on guard above, where nothing much was happening for about twenty minutes, with the dark gathering quickly. I reminded myself that I am a knitter: I am well versed in quietly waiting for things to unfold and come to be.
The other thing I want to mention? Every person I encountered, whether I interacted with them or not, had an air of happiness about them. Quite a few glanced with a smile towards the top of City Hall or above: San Jose State kids waiting for a bus, downtown diners, random people walking by on the sidewalk. The peregrines–so nearly disappeared permanently from all of life so recently–were right there, in plain sight, alive, graceful (or at times still just aspiring to be, like the rest of us) and glorious.
And life was good.