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Yesterday me and 2 of my workmates were going to lunch. We were walking towards our car talking and heard some awful ruckus.

In fact, we stopped walking to see where the noise was coming from....and saw 2 perigrine ? falcons having a fight over something one was carrying. They were raising hell, swooping, pecking, fighting....all at fairly low altitude over the top of a busy street in down town Topeka. They have a nesting program there. We were 2 blocks from the capital.

Eventually the one carrying the object (a mouse it turns out) dropped it to fight with the other one. The 2nd falcon swooped down as fast and graceful as any bird I have seen and effortlessly caught that mouse as it fell. He took off and the first bird chased him, the fight was still going on as they flew off in the distance.

I have seen a lot of things in the outdoors, but never a falcon.
It was one heck of a lot better to watch than what I have described.
Really cool to see them fly.

We had a perigrin falcon crash thru the tree to get a gold finch that was eating at our feeder. Sounded like someone threw a bowling ball. Then later on that summer at the outdoors festival there were raptor people who had hawks, falcons and owls and I mentioned that story to them and the know it all bitch says "You didn't see a perigrin falcon. I live in prior lake (the city just south of mine) and I've never seen one". Never mind the fact that I live on the river bluffs, where she just got done saying they make their nests, and she just finished telling a story of two that were swooping at people in a park one city to the east because they built their nest by a path. I couldn't even fathom the cuntness flowing thru her and just shook my head and walked away.

sent from a phancy fone

In Arkansas they have many eagles. Learned to spot them. There is an immature American bald eagle that flies over my house a lot.
I pointed it out to a few folks but they just go, "meh", whatever.
Its head isnt white yet so they say its a buzzard "or something".

We have a good supply of eagles here, too. There is a vulture rookery on the land behind me...

That's pretty cool TK. Sounds like a scene from a B movie, with falcons fighting in the city streets, but it would have been awesome to see!

aunt betty wrote:In Arkansas they have many eagles. Learned to spot them. There is an immature American bald eagle that flies over my house a lot.
I pointed it out to a few folks but they just go, "meh", whatever.
Its head isnt white yet so they say its a buzzard "or something".

Buzzards and eagles are the same thing. One is just more glorified than the other.

DC727 wrote:

aunt betty wrote:In Arkansas they have many eagles. Learned to spot them. There is an immature American bald eagle that flies over my house a lot.
I pointed it out to a few folks but they just go, "meh", whatever.
Its head isnt white yet so they say its a buzzard "or something".

Buzzards and eagles are the same thing. One is just more glorified than the other.

A bald eagle took my neighbors puppy this past winter. He saw it happen.

No buzzard ever did that to a live animal, that I am aware of. And I know, eagles are scavengers, too.

Went out scouting one morbid g last season and saw an Harrier Hawk trying to get him a Coot lunch. That hawk spotted a large group if Coot in the middle of this small lake and commenced diving at it and each time right before it could grab one the whole group dove and resurfaced a minute later. This went on for maybe 20 minutes.

Have watched Eagles and Hawks stir up flocks of snow geese on the water and land. I really don't like them hanging out next to me when I have a spread set out but not much I can do about them.

I was sitting in the deer stand one morning while my son was duck hunting about a hundred yards away. I saw something walking in the bottom near my stand and realized it was a wounded wood duck that my son still swears he didn't wound. As I'm watching it, a hawk came out of nowhere and nailed him. He stood on top of him for a minute and then hopped up and nailed him again. This went on for several minutes. I was on the phone with my son giving him the play by play and he didn't believe me. When he got through hunting, we walked down and all that was left was a pile of feathers and a few guts. I never saw the hawk drag the rest of the duck off, but its hard to imagine him flying off with the ducks body. We looked around and couldn't find the rest of it, so I'm assuming he did manage to fly off with it. It was an amazing site nonetheless.

Went scouting a couple of my spots last season. Bout 500 buffies spread out on this lagoon. I watched for bout 10 minute these two bald eagles dive bomb these buffies. Each time they'd get bout 10 feet above the water when the ducks would dive. They never caught a one. I was rooting for the eagles. Would been fun to see

When scouting some flooded temper a few years ago, I watched what I believe was a red tailed hawk try to take hen wood duck in flight... The hawk was about 75% the size of the duck. It was like watching a small free safety try to tackle a wide reviewer feet first in mid air. I was walking along side the water when they both went crashing by me into a thorn bush, where that wood duck preceded to kick the shit out of the hawk and fly away.

I've seen them twice in downtown Pittsburgh. Once one was eating a pigeon on the sill of a window sixth floor of a nice hotel. We watched it tear the pigeon to shreds from our office. The other time, a falcon had another pigeon on a window sill of the second story of the Verizon building. That one drew a crowd on the sidewalk.