hello tweets, and rutht at somewhere.or.other;

the peregrine falcon that i saw at the montlake fill was facing me
in the evening (setting) sun, under a dark grey cloud cover, with
light rain falling.

i saw her breast first because it was a pale buffy color near her
face, darker red-orange on her belly. the overall coloring seemed
to be a light reddish-orangish wash, or perhaps a pinkish wash,
over her entire breast area. it is possible that this color was the
result of the lighting, or maybe not. her head was quite black. she
seemed large, which is why i thought her to be a female.

after being harassed by the crows, she flew out over the lake, flipped
on her back and appeared to have momentarily grabbed an attacking
crow by the feet, since the crow-peregrine sank briefly towards the
water. the crow managed to escape and the peregrine righted herself
and looped back over the fill and in front of me. at this point,
her breast appeared to have many brown (?) streaks on the sides, with a
clearer area in the middle an upper portions of her breast. this
clearer area could have had fine barring on it, but i am not sure
since the light was getting really bad and she was moving so fast
at this point (but she was fairly low, maybe 30 feet above the
ground).

i hope this was clear, and i am sorry to send this to the entire
tweeterdom, but i deleted rutht's message, and her email address
with it!

regards,

Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~nyneve/
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