Nature Done Wright

                      Photo courtesy Steve Sachs photography

My latest column for The Record and other USA Today newspapers in NJ is all about the Beast, the big attraction at the State Line Hawk Watch in Alpine.

Tomorrow on this blog: Before the Beast, eight decades ago, there was…

You can read my column about the Beast here:

By Jim Wright

Special to The Record

    She’s called “the Beast.” She just might be the most photographed peregrine falcon in the wild. And she calls North Jersey home.

I’m talking about the female falcon that rules the roost at the State Line Hawk Watch in Alpine.

   You can tell how photogenic and accessible she is by the row of photographers with high-powered telephotos lenses and tripods lined up on weekends, hoping to take her picture when she perches on a nearby tree branch above the Palisades. 

   This peregrine is the avian equivalent of Adele, except with a much more feral voice. 

   The nearby parking lot often tells the story. That’s where you might see license plates from states up and down the East Coast. She’s that big of a draw. 

   According to nature photographer Steve Sachs, a longtime regular at the hawk watch, this dominant peregrine was banded in Cape May as a young bird in December 2015. She settled in Alpine the following spring.

   A falcon pair was already nesting there when she arrived, but the new female quickly won the male’s affections. The other female vanished soon after, and there’s speculation that she might have met an untimely death at the hands (or talons) of the new arrival.

    A few days later, a star was born.

    “I watched her [kill] a ring-billed gull that May without even a chase,” Sachs says. “She just flew out and grabbed it and flew back with it to the trees down in the bowl north of the lookout. I knew she was different then.” (Sachs, by the way, prefers to call her simply “the female.”)

     She started drawing a crowd when she and her new mate got amorous a few times on a nearby wall or tree branch.

    Photographer Natalie Cavallaro lives almost 50 miles away on Long Island, and with traffic it can take up to two hours each way to see the famed falcon, but she says that the drive won’t keep her away:  

"I've been there three times, and each time I stay at least five hours hoping to see her," Cavallaro says. "But it’s worth it.”

    Incredibly, no photographer was present in April 2018 when the Beast put on her most impressive territorial display. That was when a young migrating bald eagle flew into the falcon’s comfort zone. 

  As hawk watcher Bill Tonner describes it, “The peregrine intercepted the eagle three times before turning up from the river and gaining altitude quickly, then turned down again to her target. She transformed herself into a bullet, decreasing in size and increasing in speed. In an instant, she impacted the eagle, killing it….”

    I must admit that I’m one of the shutterbugs who love to photograph the Beast. Not only is she photogenic, but she also often announces her arrival and then perches/poses on a nearby branch. 

    I can’t think of any other place where you can reliably get views of a peregrine this amazing. And she doesn’t seem to care in the least. 

    The Bird Watcher column appears every other Thursday. Email Jim at celeryfarm@gmail.com.

You can download a pdf of the column here:

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