It's a birthday tradition that I go to New Jersey with my friend Bob to photograph raptors and so I picked Bob up at 8am this morning and we headed out for our annual trip. I'm not much of a morning person, but I did get up and pick him up on time.

We spent the day at the Palisades Interstate Park in New Jersey and had the pleasure of photographing the resident pair of Peregrine Falcons all day. It was a mostly overcast day, which is perfect for the situation, and the falcons were in and out of the area throughout the day. They both posed so nicely and preened, giving some nice opportunities for perched photos. They occasionally chased the vultures and one of them chased another falcon away. 

The biggest highlight was that the male brought in two meals and ate them in front of us. Although, he did have his backside to us so it was a little difficult to see what he was eating. The second time though, he did show us his meal before turning around and sadly it was this beautiful palm warbler that I took photographs of just minutes before he became the falcons dinner.

It was a fantastic day hanging out with Bob and photographing the falcons. We also ran into our mutual friend, Dan, and some other photographer friends we've met throughout the years.

Since I took just over 700 photos, it will probably be a while before I get through them all, so I quickly did a quick scroll through and decided to share one of the male falcon for my photo of the day.