The evening I met 82/AN, Jo Durt, was the first time I saw a Peregrine Falcon stoop in the wild, the species’ defining move. Some people don’t like Peregrines because they eat birds. Yet it is not that they eat birds which demands our awe and respect, but how. They fly to the heavens, turn and fold their wings tight to their bodies and plummet straight toward the earth (and their prey) at a few hundred miles per hour.
Jo Durt not only showed me this but she showed me this over and over and over again that evening.
By that point in 2014, I was already a skilled flight photographer. But I was powerless to capture anything except those few seconds when she reached the peak, decelerated, and turned to tuck her wings. The next thing I saw was Jo turning and pulling out of the dive just feet above the open water. I could barely breathe.
And she barely could either. When she finally landed, I saw how lean and tiny she was. She looked as fragile as a porcelain figurine. Yet she was very much alive and full of intensity. Her chest heaved, and she sighed violently. She gulped for breath. But she was hungry. And determined. And though she needed rest, she couldn’t take her eyes off the flocks of birds all around her. Her head bobbed sharply and rhythmically as if she could envision capturing each one and snapping its neck with her tomial tooth. She couldn’t resist the chance to feed and soon took to the air again.
It was magnificent. She was magnificent. And Jo was barely 5 months old.
I understood that evening why Peregrine mortality is so high and why collisions with vehicles, buildings, and powerlines are so common. Like an acrobat, base jumper, or anyone with a skill where the slightest deviation from perfection is punished with death, Jo’s most significant advantage was also her most considerable risk. Yet she had no choice. Her alternative was starvation.
With each dive, all of her instincts, and all of nature’s forces, were driving her straight back into the dirt she appeared from and knew she must return; only each moment, exercising the choice she’d been given to declare “no, not just yet. One more dive.”
That night, I knew I’d witnessed something and someone I would never forget. And here I am, still talking about her a decade later. And I’m still holding my breath like I did that evening when 82/AN demonstrated to me precisely how fragile, how perilous, and how astounding each moment we have truly is.
Her fall from the heavens reminding me, take nothing for granted.
Say something kind