From the sublime to the ridiculous

I had two experiences today which were so far removed from one another it’s laughable. And both took place within yards of each other.

The first: This morning I saw a perigrine falcon “looking for his breakfast” as another onlooker put it, in the water directly over the pier right behind my office building. And not the far end of the pier either - the near end. He was so close I could make out all his markings - the white crown of his head, the black streaks over his eyes, the markings on his wings. He was quite magnificent. I’ve never seen a bird of prey so close up, nor engaged in such interesting activity.

He’d hover over the water for a few seconds, about 40 feet up, beating his wings madly, looking down into the water, his legs hanging loose beneath him. You could practically see his claws twitching in anticipation of a nice juicy fish coming close to the surface. It was obvious he wasn’t used to flapping so vigourously for any extended period of time - falcons are soaring birds. He’d flap for about five or ten seconds, and then he’d stop suddenly, his wings outstretched and drop a bit to catch a bit of wind and then he’d swoop up and glide around in a circle a couple of times to rest his wings, and then go back to flapping.

He never did catch a fish while I stood there, much to my dismay. I didn’t have any sunglasses, and standing there with my hand shading my eyes for more than a few minutes wasn’t comfortable, nor what I figured I should be doing while at work. I hope he got some breakfast eventually!

The other experience was at the ridiculous end. It’s still ongoing, actually. There’s a couple of guys out on the boardwalk behind our building performing for the passersby. One of them is playing Michael Jackson tunes and dancing to them. He’s not very good, judging from the top half of him which I can see over the bushes. I can hear his music, muffled, but clear enough to know what tune it is.

The other guy is, unfortunately, not as ignorable. He’s playing karaoke tunes and singing to them. Badly. Oh my god he’s bad. The gal in the next cubicle to me called the non-emergency police line to complain, and the cops showed up an hour or so ago. He was quiet for a while, but then he started up again, louder than ever. Egads. Tom Jones music. Delilah. Country tunes. Bad 60s music. Help me!