The Diving Falcon

Polly thought about the peregrine for two days. She wanted to feel the shape of its dive.

On the third morning, before the visitor lots filled, she went to El Capitan. She found a peregrine on a high ledge. It was a male, smaller than the female she had seen with Tomas. Slate-grey back, white barred chest. It was eating something.

She perched on a manzanita branch fifty metres away and waited.

The peregrine finished its meal. It wiped its beak on the rock and looked at her. Then it stepped off the ledge.

It did not flap. It folded its wings against its body, like a leaf pulled into a stem, and dropped. It accelerated. It went past the middle of the cliff face in two seconds. Then it pulled its wings out, banked, and was gone behind a buttress.

A peregrine falcon in a dive can reach 380 kilometres an hour. That is the fastest movement of any animal on Earth. To dive that fast without injury, peregrines have a third eyelid that closes over the eye to keep the wind out. They have small cones in their nostrils that slow the air entering their lungs.

Polly was not built for that dive. She knew this. But the curiosity was bigger than the knowing.

She flew up to the ledge and looked down. The drop was nearly vertical. She folded her wings against her green body. She tilted forward. She fell.

It was not a peregrine dive. It was a parrot in too much hurry. She wobbled. The wind got under one wing. She corrected, lost the line, corrected again. Twenty metres in, she opened her wings and pulled out in a loose, embarrassed arc.

She tried again, smaller, from a lower perch. Then again, lower still. By noon, she had made eight short dives. None were peregrine dives. All were a little better than the last.