Falco peregrinus
There’s a split-second when you
see a Peregrine Falcon scything low across a city sky in which you realise that
it is a Peregrine, and not a Pigeon (Columbidae) or a Gull (Laridae); and that split second is one of the most
exciting sensations that a casual observer of the animal kingdom can experience.
The Peregrine travels fast,
exceptionally so, even in a straight flight from point to point, and when one
stops to alight on a pole or a TV antenna or on any bare, elevated position,
it’s almost a disappointment to see it stationary. Part of the exhilaration of seeing the animal
is in its flight: in being witness to, to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins, writing
about another Falcon, the Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus): “The
achieve of, the mastery of the thing”.
If birds move writers to write,
Falcons (Falconidae) stir a special
eloquence: as if those people who choose to write about them would feel ashamed
of not doing them justice. So much, both
in volume and in quality, has been written about Falcons, and about Peregrines
in particular, that it’s perhaps a folly to try to add anything at all to the
collection; and yet I see a Peregrine and I feel moved to words, as if words
could bear me aloft to take a position alongside the animal for even a few
moments.
Seeing Peregrines in Melbourne is
a surprisingly common experience: just by looking up in the sky every now and
then I see one at least once every couple of months; and if not a Peregrine,
then its smaller and no less ferocious cousin, the Australian Hobby (Falco
longipennis, a bird reputed to have been observed diving into a flock of
Pigeons and emerging with a Pigeon in each claw). Finding out information about Melbourne’s Peregrines,
though, is surprisingly difficult. A
search online yields only a handful of useful articles, and most of those
simply repeat the same information: that in 2007 a Peregrine’s nest, complete
with nestlings, was discovered on a known nesting site in Melbourne’s CBD, the
first successful use of the nest since 2004 – coincidentally, the year I moved
to Melbourne.
I’d seen Falcons occasionally in Canberra before then, though usually they were Kestrels
hovering by roadsides – a charming, even enchanting site, but lacking the
visceral thrill of seeing a Peregrine in full flight – but it wasn’t until
moving to Melbourne
that Falcons became a regular part of my life.
Since arriving in Melbourne I’ve moved house three times but I’ve kept
within five kilometres of the CBD; the radius of a Peregrine Falcon’s hunting
territory can stretch to five times that much, and it’s delightful to imagine
that the birds I’ve seen since moving to Melbourne have all been the same
individuals, or at least of the same family.
How fanciful such a thought is is
difficult to ascertain: no matter how many variations of the phrase “Peregrine
population of Melbourne”
I type into Google I can’t find an number.
It’s not important, though: for now, for me, the point of Peregrines is
not how many of them there are, but that they’re here at all. In 1962 Rachel Carson published her famous
and incalculably important book Silent
Spring, and for the first time the general public was made aware of the
horror unleashed on the environment by the widespread usage of pesticides, most
famously DDT. The book took its title
from a parable, related in the first chapter, of a town “famous for the
abundance and variety of its birdlife” – birdlife which is ultimately killed by
poisoning. The Peregrine Falcon is not a
particularly vocal bird, and certainly not a songbird, but it is the bird that
is most emblematic of the evils of DDT: through thinning the shells of this
apex predator’s eggs, DDT caused the Peregrine to become endangered in many
parts of the world. It seems that no
article about the Peregrine is complete without mentioning this fact; it bears
repeating, and it demands to be remembered.
DDT was banned in the US forty years
ago, though, and in most other countries subsequently, and as a consequence
Peregrine numbers have steadily increased.
It’s a happy irony that Peregrines, of all animals, have adapted readily
to the presence of humans, happily taking up residence in metropolitan areas:
high-rise buildings in city centres, hosting both numerous ledges on which to
nest and an abundance of Pigeons on which to feed, are as well-suited to
Peregrines as a human construction can aspire to be.
But I’m not saying anything new
here. So written about are they, so
studied are they, that it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything new to say
about Peregrines at all; except, perhaps, to recount the effect that seeing one
has on me – for the soul of a person is always new to other people. I like to say that no day in which you see a
Peregrine Falcon can be a bad day, and though it’s facetious as all such
comments are there’s an element of truth in it: catching even a glimpse of a
Peregrine so lifts the spirits that all other concerns seem earthly and facile. The last one I saw was in the most mundane of
places: above the fenced-in courts of the Clifton Tennis Centre, in Clifton
Hill, as I walked up the ramp from the pedestrian underpass beneath Hoddle Street and
Clifton Hill train station. The sky was
stagnant and overcast, and it was in the dead hours of mid-afternoon, and the
Peregrine flew hard and fast just above the autumn-stripped trees and it was
silhouetted against the sky so precisely that its wings seemed liked sabres,
its body with its short head and long tail seemed like an arrow. It was present in the sky for just long enough
for me to recognise what it was, just long enough to grasp me and root me to the
spot in stunned admiration. It was there
for just long enough for me to wonder what strange urge or instinct had led me
to lift my head at the precise moment that it was passing – and then, before I
could begin to even fathom the surprise of it, it was gone.
Image by Paul Randall, sourced from http://www.biodiversitysnapshots.net.au
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