I spent last week hiking on the wilderness beach of Olympic National Park.
While waiting out the high tide about 5 miles south of Sand Point I heard a
screeching above me and about 3 times higher than the trees were two
peregrine falcons, one slightly higher than the other. The lower one, I
assume a juv. was making the nosie. I noticed that the higher one was
holding something in its talons which it dropped. The juv. dove after it
and almost caught it, knocking what turned out to be a dead bird slightly
sideways in its attempt to catch it. It missed it and the juv did sort of a
barrel roll then actually pumped its wings flying straight down. It caught
the falling dead bird just below the level of the tops of the trees and its
momentum carried it over the water very fast. As is caught the bird it
starting calling, krika krika krika which I took to mean, I got it, I
got it! Next day saw an adult and juv, the juv was perched on a rock and
all my kids got a great look at it. Then the adult flew in low to a tree. A
very buffy chested adult, much lighter than any Peales I have seen, could've
been an Anatum? I don't know if these were the two from the day before but
it was only a mile from the action.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, teacher, writer
Snohomish