Subject: Kennedy Creek, peregrine
Date: Jan 17 19:01:48 1998
From: Rob Saecker - rsaecker at thurston.com


Stopped by Kennedy Creek this afternoon, where it empties into Totten Inlet
(between Oly and Shelton). Near low tide, and the mudflats were littered
with shorebirds. Estimated a couple thousand dunlin (I think), and maybe
2-300 black-bellied plover. As I eyed this scatter of peeps, I thought to
myself that there *should* be a falcon around. And just about the time I
thought that, my eye fell on a piling *right* in front of me, whereupon sat
a peregrine. (It's great when it happens like that, ain't it? Can't count
the times I've thought that and it didn't happen). A little on the small
side, and kind of brownish, so I'll call it an immature male.

He only sat about ten seconds for me before taking off, and as soon as the
peregrine was in the air, every peep on the flats was too. The peregrine
wasted no time; within about half a minute, he made his first stoop, and
several more followed shortly. On the fifth he managed to seperate an
individual out of the flock, but it escaped just above the surface of the
water. On the next stoop the peregrine went down...*right* behind the only
tree blocking my view, and didn't come back out where I could see. My guess
was that this last stoop was successful, because all the shorebird flocks
came back in and resumed feeding. But it's equally possible that the
peregrine gave up and flew off in a direction that I couldn't see. In any
case, I could not locate him again, despite moving to either side of the
offending tree trying to cover all of the flats. But what a show...

Rob Saecker
Olympia