The Monarch of the Cliffs

I took a bagful of photos today down in the Bay. After Barney's bluster last night the bay was bright with sun and the shingle combed up in the shape of the passing storm.

My final first choice is of this Peregrine Falcon floating imperiously on the up draft from 300 feet of chalk cliff. It's a hugely cropped down affair. One falcon was sitting in a bare dead hawthorn on the cliff's edge; the other was riding the updraft and then bombing down to do repeated fly-pasts over and under the tree-sitter.

I struggled around down on the beach until I found a large chalk boulder to stabilise my quavering hand. After ten minutes of so of this game the falcon in the tree slipped into the wind and floated away. I imagined she was a she and the dive-bomber a he. It was fabulous. 

There's an extra of one of the fly-pasts. And one of the Bay.