I had a nice at-sea visit by a peregrine falcon - a bird I rarely see and never got a nice photo of - while cruising around the Windward Passage off SE Cuba...he was hitching a ride on the boat for his southbound migration to S. America, and occasionally launching off to hunt over the seas for a flying fish...this gave me a good opportunity to stand on my balcony and finally get some nice peregrine shots! I was using the A580 DSLR with Tamron 150-600mm lens. Banking around behind the ship Coming back in the direction of the ship: Coming directly over my balcony, backlit by the sun: Making a high speed pass by my balcony...boy, they're fast!; Another pass going the opposite direction of the boat, closer: Coming back, and having a look at me this time - since I was pointing a big black tube at him!: Coming straight on at full speed: A final pass, banking away as he got parallel to my balcony:
never knew peregrines hunt fish. must have been a thrill to photograph the fastest animal on earth. my favorite raptor
They really are quite something - super fast - it's like they hit the afterburners and go from normal fast to hyper fast turbo mode. I had never known them to be fishers either - but I guess when migrating and passing over all those long ocean passages, they may get hungry and become opportunists. The flying fish can get to be a pretty good size and can fly quite a ways out of the water - so maybe they look more like birds anyway! Since he was staying with the ship for a few days as his home base, I guess it was hard not to notice all the winged creatures buzzing down below and he decided to go try them out.
when I first started and was using a D80 and tamron 200-500 I saw a peregrine fighting with a gull over a crab. once in lifetime thing and I was at ISO400 and F8 so my shutter was too slow and every shot was blurry. needless to say I was upset. learned a lesson that day
