Imagine for a moment that both you and your spouse are trained pilots, and you each have identical aircraft. He has just come out of the airport diner with a ham and cheese hero, and together both spouses walk to their respective aircraft, climb in and fire up their engines; you both are about to give a new meaning to the term, “lunch break.” Once aloft, both husband and wife somehow maneuver their aircraft, without banging into each other or the ground, close enough together to pass that ham and cheese hero from one cockpit to the other.

It may sound crazy and risky to share lunch like this, but there are birds of prey that do this several times a day, every day. Peregrine falcons, which are making a slow comeback in the region, perform a food transfer in mid-air as part of a courtship ritual, during rearing of their young, and later to train the newly fledged young in flight skills.

Typically, one of the pair (usually the male) will approach the nest area with a small bird in its talons. The female near the nest scrape will see the approaching mate, and she will launch herself into the air. She will intercept the male, usually flying up or down the cliff to do so. They may make a big circle back to the area of the nest scrape, and when both male and female are together, there may be a couple of rolls and a vertical climb, and the prey item is transferred to the female. The whole sequence takes a couple of seconds, and an observer watching through binoculars may not even see it well enough to know what happened.

During a monitoring session at one of the region’s peregrine nest sites, I managed to capture a food transfer between adults in a quick sequence of images. If you are still hungry after reading this column, Blairstown Airport is supposed to have some good chili. Fly safe.