Peregrine Falcon administering the coup de grâce to a laughing gull. Flamingo Marina, Everglades National Park, Florida.
As a photographer I believe you make our own luck. This can be through knowledge of your subject, technical skills, or just putting in the time in a location and being prepared. The latter was more important when the opportunity to capture some unusual behavior with a peregrine falcon and a laughing gull (although at the risk of stating the obvious – the demeanor of the gull is anything but humorous!). I had just finished photographing brown pelicans at close range diving for fish at Flamingo Marina. This had been my third session with the pelicans, and I had spent quite some considerable time around the marina over the last three days. On my walk back to the parking area, I felt a dull blow to my shoulder and something flashed past in my peripheral vision. The falcon had landed a few feet away and was pinning down the gull – trying to administer a killing blow. Fortunately, I still had a 300 f2.8 lens attached to a body around my shoulder. Backing off several yards (to lower the chances of the falcon abandoning her food) I dropped to near ground level to obtain a better perspective. I knew as soon as the falcon had killed the gull, she would take off again. I managed to take about 10 frames with different expressions of both birds – then she was gone with the now dead gull. It was interesting to see the power as she took off with a dead weight of maybe a third to a half of her own weight – almost effortlessly. Afterwards, I realized what had happened- the falcon had struck the gull with insufficient velocity (probably from a low altitude) to kill it outright – as would normally happen. The struggling gull was large enough that the falcon could not control her flight – and I just happened to be in the way!
This image may be purchased as an Open Edition Print.
