Peregrine Falcon and Bright Angel

I painted this piece from a favorite location not far from a peregrine falcon eyrie that I visit every year and have watched this peregrines hunting as a highlight of my time in the Grand Canyon each September.  As I painted this piece the peregrine flew past a few different times.  However, I couldn’t paint fast enough for this larger size.  So I relied on a pair of smaller plein air studies of the same falcon at the same area as well as my photography to create this scene which conveys my thrilling experiences witnessing the fastest creature on earth hunting in one of the most spectacular places on the planet.  The many miles of cliffs of the Grand Canyon are estimated home to about 100 nesting pair of peregrine falcons, making it the world’s largest population.  Despite their incredible speed (exceeding 240 mph when pursuing prey), high intelligence (related to parrots rather than other raptors), and world wide distribution, peregrines catastrophically crashed in the mid 20th century due to several factors, most notably organochloride pesticides used on food crops. Fortunately, in the early 1970s, the newly created Endangered Species Act, intensive research, funding, education and management managed to bring them back from the brink of extinction and today peregrines are a bright symbol of hope for what we can do for endangered species.