Hi Tweets:

Those glass bottle feeders with a tube hanging down...aren't they some kind
of a bottle to be used in chemistry experiments? I seem to remember
waaaaayyy back in high school seeing them...rubber stopper with the tube
protruding through it? Is that what you are describing? If so, maybe a
supply catalog (online of course!) would feature what you want.

Meanwhile, I was witness to one of Dan Varland's banded peregrines taking a
drake mallard in front of my house on Wed. the 5th. She is a large female
Peale's we had caught on 12/16/99 on the beach about a mile from my house,
but had a hard time subduing such a large duck. I was thrilled to see the
peregrine in my yard but felt sorry for the mallard as it struggled forward
with that falcon on it's back. I watched her kill the duck with the bite to
the back of it's neck...by that time I had my scope on the scene below and
had I.D.'d the colored band, and was on the cordless phone calling Dan to
tell him one of "our" birds was in the yard. It took her 50 minutes to eat
the whole duck, long enough for me to walk outside and begin taking a series
of photos as I slowly moved closer. I got to within 30 feet of her and then
stopped as I was out in the open and didn't want to drive her off her meal.

When she finally flew off, her crop was pretty distended. My last photos
were of the remains of the duck and the trail of feathers. My camera is a
Minolta Maxxum 330si RZ with a 70-210 zoom lens. It was too dark to put a
camera on the scope...7:15 am on an overcast day.

Oh...she came back the following day too; I saw her make 4 passes up and
back on the street, scattering ducks as she flew by, but she didn't make any
attempts to chase any of them down.

Dianna Moore
Ocean Shores, Wa.
dlmoor2 at coastaccess.com