It is November. Leaden skies. Awful light; or incredibly beautiful light on birds. Rarely in between. I was watching an awful football game, just trying to crash after a 3.5 hour meeting, but the game stunk so badly I determined to get out of the house and look for large accipiters. I had two different Cooper’s Hawks this morning, both hunting and flying within feet of me in pursuit of prey. Incredible views and experiences. And maybe,just maybe I would find a goshawk today. (I’ve not seen either of the birds reported at Fresh Pond). The Mystic Lakes seemed dead, and the light was beyond bad.

In quiet desperation, I drove to Fresh Pond, hoping to find Accipiter Gentilis perched on the Sozio’s sign, or in Discovery Park, or sitting on the billboard on the B&M tracks. I saw two sickle-shaped birds streaking across the billowy ashen sky. Peregrines. “My” two Peregrines. Appearing to be playing tag. I pulled into the mall and parked near my usual falcon observation point. Both birds. This morning in 2.5 hours I had seen only the male, in an exciting but not happy encounter (more on that in a Buzz & Ruby post). I have not seen the female for days. This was two Peregrines. Mere silhouettes slicing up the ashes, clearly male and female. Was he chasing her? Or was she chasing him? Yes. Definitely yes.

For the next hour I sat mesmerized by two silhouettes doing things I had never seen before, not over this period of time with this intensity. I’ve seen courtship in the spring, in Cambridge and off a mountain cliff in Maine. I’ve seen Peregrines screaming and dive bombing Bald Eagles just cruising by an eyrie with chicks, and making life hell for Turkey Vultures floating by seemingly aimlessly. I’ve seen flights followed by copulation, And playfulness, where the female flies rings around the male, lands on her back on the rooftop edge, rolls over and stretches her legs into the sky, and the male plunges towards her, talons dropped, screaming, as two pairs of legs with talons stretched to their limits and barely avoid locking, with god only knows what potential consequences. (This was NOT copulation.)

I’ve been there on windy days in March and April, when lengthening days and more intense sunlight set off chemo-receptors in Peregrine Falcons and stimulate amazing courtship flights, falcons mirroring each other in kiting off the blowback from 22-story apartment buildings, and rising and then plunging 180 degrees down towards asphalt, spiraling in unison. I even have a photo or two of a Peregrine arcing from 90 degrees to 180 degrees, beak heading for asphalt faster than anything else was moving in that parking lot.

I don’t know the meaning of what I saw today. It can’t be lengthening days stimulating hormones for courtship. There was no visible attempt at mounting. I didn’t even see them perch together on the same building. But it was clear that they owned these three towers. It was clear that gravity is highly overrated, at least in their opinion. It was clear that there was not another bird in the sky anywhere near them. Maybe because of the incipient darkness. Maybe because other birds realized they had no business in that airspace. They could not compete, and they might not even survive. This was an aerial display beyond description, yet I will try to at least document it.

She chased him from east (Rindge 3) to west (Rindge 1). This was not prosaic horizontal flight. He was hugging the contours of the buildings, swooping up one side, wheeling around the north side, and plunging downward on the other, and he did a circle 8 around two or three of the towers. He was either trying to evade her, or tease her. She is not as fast and agile as he. She is bigger, more powerful, but she can’t catch him. Maybe that was part of the “game.” But he chased her as well, at least occasionally. He should have been able to catch her, but he did not. Again, maybe he was taunting, or teasing. But most often, most often she was going after him. This is a pair that was newly mated a little over a year ago, and raised three incredibly beautiful kids together this year. Maybe it was an important part of their renewed bonding, where she challenges him to prove how fast and skilled he is. That he is worthy of giving her his DNA. Maybe someone with more experience with Peregrines can tell me what this was I was watching.

They weaved between buildings, like riding a roller coast or a wild mouse. How fast can you fly at that building and still miss it? How close can you come to the edge of the roof without crashing? Almost all the activity happened in a box within 50 yards of either side of the outer towers, One and Three. Once they actually shot over Rte 16 and the Summer Shack lot, but that was the exception. Several times the pursuit extended south, into Fresh Pond mall north of Staples. I was talking to my brother on the cell when suddenly the two mini-rockets left Rindge air space. He shot down at about 65 or 70 degrees towards the Apple Theater parking lot. She followed, as though trying to give him a mid-air prostate exam at 40-60 miles an hour. I have no idea how fast they were actually going. Just incredibly fast. Faster than anything else I’ve seen flying today. They went down below car rooftop level in the parking lot. Below my eye level!!! In a parking lot filled with moving cars. I then spotted him wheeling up out of the asphalt, swooping up the east side of Rindge 3 and leisurely gliding onto the rooftop of the south stairwell on Rindge 1. A shaft of sunlight broke through the November sky and spotlighted the small, light colored adult male. But he was alone. I did not see her come up. I told my brother I had to hang up and start searching the parking lot for an injured Peregrine. Several times I have seen Buzz the Redtail barely avoid disaster and death in the form of a moving automobile, which he cut across. A split second later and Buzz would have been history. This female Peregrine did not come up. I started out, fearing what I would find, and not knowing what I would do if she was still alive but critically injured at 4:30 on a dark Sunday evening of a three-day holiday weekend.

Suddenly I saw a hulking form looming over the western edge of the Ridge 3 roof. She was there. She was THERE! Wait a second. Had she been there all the time. Had I possibly been seeing the male with a second female? Had there actually been three Peregrines? I hesitated for a moment, but it had always been male/female. Never two females, and knowing her, she would not have sat by while her mate dallied with another female. This was her, and somehow she was okay. She had made it. They both sat for what seemed like more than a minute or two, and then the acrobatics resumed. He would perch on the fence on Rindge 1 and she on the corner of Rindge 3, and she would lift off in his direction and he would leap up in front of her and the chase was on. They would play roulette with the buildings. Now he was on Rindge 2, southeast corner, and she on the northwest corner of Rindge 1. This went on until 4:45, when you could only see the birds when they swept up high above the buildings, rising out of the shadows to where they became shadows silhouetted against softly dimming gray.

I was exhausted. Drained. On empty. I was so lucky that I had left the house to look for large accipiters. I was so lucky to see these two falcons do what they do like no other bird. I was so lucky that I saw all this within two miles of my home, surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of people in the mall who had been oblivious to this incredible air show occurring within their view. I was incredibly lucky.

I just wish I knew what it meant. Best, Paul Paul M. Roberts
Medford, MA
phawk254@comcast.net