Things the Droid camera is not good at

Taking photos of the peregrine falcon that had just made a kill in our back yard.

Honestly, with the only camera available being the Droid, why did the autofocus decide that the most important thing to keep focussed was the screen on the window? It's perfectly sharp. The humongous falcon fifteen yards away? Not so much.

I caught a glimpse of something odd in the back yard, turned, looked more closely, and my brain clicked through: that's a very large bird -- that's a raptor -- that's a peregrine falcon in about a second. I grew up fairly close to the peregrine breeding program at Cornell University, and once my parents hosted a bird in their crabapple tree for a quarter hour or so.

The usual predator birds around here are red-tailed hawks, which are brown with red tails -- this one had a distinctly charcoal grey-black head and a striped belly. I think it was quite large, and thus a good chance of being a female.

The bird had caught and killed something, which Eliz thinks was one of our yard bunnies. The prey was large enough that the bird had to grab it in one foot and start hopping along the yard in order to get enough thrust to take off.

I've seen peregrine falcons in Boston itself among the high buildings -- apparently they think skyscrapers make an adequate substitute for cliffs, and pigeons are tasty and plentiful.

Things the Droid camera is not good at

Taking photos of the peregrine falcon that had just made a kill in our back yard.

Honestly, with the only camera available being the Droid, why did the autofocus decide that the most important thing to keep focussed was the screen on the window? It's perfectly sharp. The humongous falcon fifteen yards away? Not so much.

I caught a glimpse of something odd in the back yard, turned, looked more closely, and my brain clicked through: that's a very large bird -- that's a raptor -- that's a peregrine falcon in about a second. I grew up fairly close to the peregrine breeding program at Cornell University, and once my parents hosted a bird in their crabapple tree for a quarter hour or so.

The usual predator birds around here are red-tailed hawks, which are brown with red tails -- this one had a distinctly charcoal grey-black head and a striped belly. I think it was quite large, and thus a good chance of being a female.

The bird had caught and killed something, which Eliz thinks was one of our yard bunnies. The prey was large enough that the bird had to grab it in one foot and start hopping along the yard in order to get enough thrust to take off.

I've seen peregrine falcons in Boston itself among the high buildings -- apparently they think skyscrapers make an adequate substitute for cliffs, and pigeons are tasty and plentiful.