Peregrine

I felt sufficiently robust to try my luck on a short fairly level walk along the top of the mendips in the blustery wind today.  I was hoping for a raven or possibly a kestrel and instead was absolutely made up to get some shots of this fellow.  I've seen peregrines before but this is the closest I've managed to get in the wild.  He's cropped more than I would like but even so its great to have got a reasonably good shot of him in flight.

The peregrine seemed to be enjoying winding up some nearby ravens, as he kept flying high above and hovering over their trees. When the ravens came out to protest, he would stoop and buzz them before regaining his altitude, and the ravens would grumble a bit and go back to the trees.  Fascinating to watch but just a bit too far for me to be able to get any sort of meaningful photo of it.

I got back tired and rather sore, but it was worth it :-)))

I may have better shots than this one, I took about 1,000 (I kid you not - told you I was excited) but its going to take several hours to review them and weed out everything except the best ones.