North coast Peregrine

The weather was dark and dismal again today with the prevailing winds being East to South east but I wanted my share of fresh air and freedom so I headed up on to the north coast to try my luck with the Peregrine,

Everything was very quiet at first but I eventually snapped a few shots of a bird that was four to five hundred metres away on a cliff edge, It was a stretch for 500mm lens, so I added a 1.7 teleconverter to my assembly and sat and waited to see if it might move in my direction,  No such luck !!  in fact the peregrine moved nothing accept it head to keep an eye all around for over thirty minutes.

Taking note of the Peregrines position I decided to move on around the coast path keeping my head down where necessary until I was approximately fifty metres away,  I reassembled my kit ready to shoot and inched my head and lens above the gorse line to get a sneaky close look at the bird,

It had not moved an inch other than its head and eyes which were already staring straight at me, So that was my cover blown !!  From that moment I never moved an inch other than my shutter finger  as it went through a series of typical Peregrine body moves all of which tend to signal a forthcoming take-off as can be seen in images one to five below...........

Tail raised to poop

Individual wing stretches supported by the relevant foot for balance

Double wings raised ready to go

Wings starting to spread just before Take-off

And finally a drop-off rather than a take -off

This fine Peregrine was never going to take off into the wind in front of it because of my presence in front and above it, By just dropping off the cliff behind it was out of sight and moving safely away in seconds,  So no take -off sequence this time !!