The Blacks Beach Sentinels
Posted onEerily in the pre-dawn light, where everything seems to take on an otherworldly patina, the shrill cries echo off of the massive sandstone cliffs looming over Scripps Canyon. At once haunting and majestic, this is merely the aural interplay between the Blacks Beach Peregrine falcons and their newly fledged offspring. And the sound is unmistakable – a sharp rip in the sky, unique to these magnificent birds of prey.
The Blacks Beach Peregrine family has been living and reproducing on the scrape above the Lifeguard Perch since 2006, astounding beachgoers who witness them performing impossible aerobatic maneuvers and precision strikes upon unsuspecting prey. By far the fastest members in the animal kingdom, these raptors are, for want of a better term, “living missiles”: A Living Missile
Blacks Beach local Will Sooter has been observing, collecting behavioral data and photographing the ever-evolving family of Peregrines which reside at Blacks Beach since 2006, when lifeguards Brian Zeller and Eric Jones pulled him from his research on a migratory Peregrine falcon at Torrey Pines Natural Reserve, and told him that they believed there was a Peregrine breeding pair further south at Pinecone Canyon. Upon investigation by Will determined that the Peregrines observed at Pincone where the first breeding pair at this locale in half a century. He arranged for a rappel of the cliff and his partner Scott Francis placed USFWS identity bands on 3 eyasses (chicks) that year.
Since then, the female Falcon has produced 32 offspring (although the female remains the only original member; she is on her third Tiercel mate). And during the late Spring, the fledglings careen and shriek all along the canvas of sandstone; learning to hunt and survive as their parents fly protectively above. This is the spectacle which causes everyone on the beach to turn their backs to the Pacific ocean and stare, fascinated, at the faunal interplay taking place along the timeworn cliffs. It’s actually pretty amusing: people entranced not by the sea, but seemingly hypnotized by the sandstone massif directly East. And woe is the sandpiper or pigeon (or snake or squirrel) that lets down its guard for even an instant – at 200 mph the encounter is swift, silent and lethal.
