Superbird

Yesterday morning I photographed this Peregrine Falcon (Falco Peregrinus) on the siren tower across the road from my house, with a kill which it was feeding on, a small bird of some unfortunate kind. I've seen it there before but was never quick enough to get the camera out and loaded with my modest 200mm zoom. This time, as it had breakfast, it seemed to be in no hurry. The close-up picture is of the original cropped and blown up in Photoshop, thus the pixelation, so I'm unable to identify it's meal other than it's another bird.

For those of you who've known me since school you may remember my nickname was the Birdman because I've always had a love for Ornithology, albeit as an amateur. Since primary school I had an interest in birds, it was a fascinating hobby both out birdwatching in the bush and at home breeding the large variety of budgies, lovebirds, cockatiels, canaries, quails, finches, doves, parakeets, and other feathered friends in a couple of large aviaries.

Predictably as I grew up into a twenty something (yes late bloomer) testosterone pumped young, dumb & fulla cum rock star my interest in the feathered birds was taken over by a constant infatuation with large flocks of gorgeous young human 'birds' (ok that's admittedly still true, albeit with a look-but-don't-touch restriction called marriage).

But when I was younger I was quite the loner actually, and quite happily so; so to spend hours out in the bush chasing after the next LBJ (little brown job) with my grandfathers old binoculars was quite an enjoyable pass-time. Many labelled me as a nerd, but that never really bothered me. I had my friends and I had my birds, and I was fucken good at birdwatching! In fact I still am, and that's a challenge to any other twitchers out there!

My recent trip to Gaborone in Botswana yielded over 150 identified species in 10 days, a personal record.

Where this is going: for most of my years as a twitcher the Peregrine has always been my favourite bird, out of the 900 odd species known in Southern Africa. The reason being is its majestic beauty, and the way it hunts by circling high until it spots it's prey and then diving steeply at over 320km per hour, striking with such force that it's prey practically explodes in a flurry of feathers. This makes it the fastest living creature on the planet! Not surprisingly my favourite animal is the cheetah!

It's a beautiful bird, and fortunately fairly common around Cape Town, but I was still excited to see one with a kill in my back yard!

Problem is now I don't have a working pair of binoculars anymore, my last pair fell out the car in Gaborone and broke, and I can't afford new ones for a while so the birdatching will have to take a back seat for some time to come. This breaks my heart, but shit happens, as they say!