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Having breakfast at Church Point yesterday morning
at 8am (Sydney's northern suburbs) I watched a Peregrine that had just attacked
a pigeon. Unfortunately for the Peregrine the now dead pigeon fell into
the water, which was dead calm. It circled round and made a low level
pass, at normal cruising flight speed, grabbing at the carcase, attempting to
pluck breakfast from the briny, but had no luck. It tried again,
approaching at the same speed. Still no luck.
For its third attempt it changed tack and
approached at very low speed, got a good grip on the bird, nearly stalled, and
then with considerable effort managed to drag the pigeon from the water and fly
off to a nearby boat where it perched on the mast to consume its hard won
breakfast.
Quite an effort given the pigeon would have been
getting waterlogged and hence quite heavy.
A wonderful treat to accompany the flat white
and raisin toast!
Any other records/sightings of the smaller raptors
taking birds (or anything else for that matter) from at the water's
surface as opposed to live birds from the surface or the
shallows?
Matthew Taylor
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