[Brewpralgar]

Last weekend I went down to NJ to meet up with Clark, so that we could head over to the NYC Century Bike Tour, which was sunday the 18th. We had a good time, and the next morning Clark had the idea that we could drive over to Sandy Hook where he has taken quite a few excellent pictures of birds and other things. He told me about the different shore birds that he'd seen there, and other details about the old Fort Hancock that used to protect NYC Harbor in both WW's 1 and 2, and afterwards during the Cold War. It sounded pretty interesting, and though I'm not generally a birder I appreciate seeing different things/birds or whatever so decided to head to the beach.

Clark was looking around for different birds and not seeing much, and I was looking at shells and digging in the sand where bubbles were coming up after the waves had receded (I thought I might have clams for dinner ). He didn't think there were too many interesting birds (just lots of seagulls and distant, flying osprey), so we walked towards a dune area where beyond he had seen dippers and skimmers and all of those other beach birds. One of us spotted what looked like a raptor sitting on a log, facing the water watching the gulls etc, so Clark decided that we would try taking a few pictures while slowly sneaking up on it. It's back was to us, so it didn't really see us on the other side of the short dune. Clark thought at first it was an osprey, and since I don't look at bird books too much lately, didn't know any differently. We took a few pictures and slowly inched forward, exchanged cameras, and then Clark said "Dude, you are sooo lucky! I think that's a Peregrine Falcon!". I thought, 'well, that's cool!' Clark had told me that he'd only seen one a few times before, usually flying low and very fast, not really allowing for any decent pictures. It was very content to sit on the log, looking around, for quite a while! We were both surprised that it didn't bolt at any time, until a little later a couple came walking along the dune and it flew off a short distance. Interestingly, when it flew away it headed towards a small cove and harassed a few of the gulls that were sitting on the water. They all flinched, but none tried to fly away and eventually the falcon flew off when the couple approached it's perch.

I took some pics with my camera and one of clark's lenses, he took some with his camera and then we switched cameras.

Clarks' pics


peregrine falcon preening (his camera)


pic of verrazano-narrows bridge, coast guard cutter, me (my camera)


peregrine watching birds fly overhead


me looking through clark's camera


clark's pic of the bird and I looking at each other (that's my ear to the left)

My pics


bird, surf and brooklyn


my camera (grass is waving in between, causing blurs)




falcon sizing up seagull for the freezer


falcon stretching after long siesta
clark's camera


preening after stretch; sees couple walking towards beach
clark's camera


taking off


turning to harass the seagulls; they are just becoming aware that it's headed their way


I was watching a youtube video the other night about peregrine falcons as it
turns out! It said that after ww2, peregrine falcons on the east coast were
very few, and the gene pool severely depleted. as a result, conservation groups
decided to raise some captive falcons from other regions and introduce them
into the east coast populations. Peregrines have now rebounded very nicely,
but there are many intermediate forms between the former eastern forms
and other western and northern species. Some groups think that this is
blasphemous, but I don't think the birds care and are happy to be alive!

there are some other Sandy Hook pics that i'll include in a follow-up post