Almost tempted to post this in What Are You Listening To Now?, but really this is what I listened to this morning.
I get up early (old guy syndrome) and was sitting inside enjoying my coffee when all of a sudden I hear a rather loud QUEAK QUEAK QUEAK - it sounded a lot like a bad wheel bearing, very rhythmic in nature and ,,,, well kind of queaky. The sound did not stop and there was no Doppler effect (ala a car rolling by with a bad wheel bearing). So out of my comfy chair and to the back stoop I go.
Step outside and find a Peregrine Falcon on the electric pole right in our back yard (on 56th Street in Milwaukee). The bird had adult plumage and was queaking whilst raising it's wings partially. Almost in a distressed manner. All of a sudden another Peregrine appears and pearches atop of the electrical pole with something clasped in it's talon.
The bird below it kept queaking and raising it's wings while the bird above sat there holding it's prize. Then, to my wondering eyes, a third Peregrine comes swooping in (hardly at full speed!) and dive bombs the queaker. Several passes at the queaker did nothing to dissuade its queaking. Finally the queaker took off and landed on a roof two doors down.
The dive-bomber pursued it and kept 'attacking' whilst the queaker kept a queaking. After several passes the queaker was dislodged from the roof and went out of sight, the 'attacker' also went out of site. Now the bird with the prize starts quocking (a lower pitched queak if you will) but again rather rhythmic and certainly loud. Somewhere during this I went inside and grabbed our camera; I started to video the quoker and watched as it rhythmically quocked and started pivoting in a circle atop the electrical pole. As if it were calling out to at least one of the other Peregrine's. After a short video shoot (hopefully the quoking is faithfully reproduced) I switched the camera to 'picture' mode so that I could zoom in and get some hopefully nice shots. Well our camera makes a 'beep' when a picture is taken, the bird heard the beep and turned towards me and became silent.
I went inside and futzed with the camera to turn off all sounds (beep and fake shutter noise). The quoker kicks it in gear again and starts calling out. My wife was awake now, she came out and we saw the quocker two doors down atop an electrical pole still holding it's prey. Suddenly the bird flies by and then 2 second later another Pergrine goes flying by in the same direction . . . we ass-u-me it was the 'attacker'. And they flew out of sight.
All three birds had adult plumage, again with the assumptions . . . perhaps the 'queaker' was a young adult (not sure when they get their adult plumage) and it was time for the young one to fend for it's self. The male caught breakfast and the female was 'attacking' the youngster in an attempt to show some tough love and let the bird find its own way.
All in all it was wondrous way to start my morning, we have seen hawks in our neighborhood plenty of times, but the Peregrines were a special surprise.
