Photo by Richard Fichera

Peregrine Falcon Fledgling

This image is from Summer 2024 in Woburn MA. A group of us had been watching a Peregrine Falcon nest steadily when it became obvious that their were eggs and then chicks in the nest. This picture is of one of the 3 out of 4 surviving chicks the first day he fledged. He was a little unsure of himself and spent some time making short flights from rocks at the base of the cliff where the nest was, allowing us the opportunity to get some unusually good images of him flying, landing and taking off at eye-level. This image shows him just as he takes off. I think it captures the dynamism of his sudden leap as he unfurls his wings pretty well (note small pieces of gravel in the air behind him).

Editing notesThis was originally edited in ON1 Photo Raw 2024 and subsequently touched up with 2025. My main challenges were the intense highlights, which I reduced with a combination of conventional masking combined with a depth mask. The final touch was to use a depth mask and then manually erase all of it except the portion that was on the highly illuminated top and upper back of the bird. I also used dynamic contrast on the bird. The final challenge was framing - I really liked the image, but it was really off-center and very close to the left margin, so I used the local AI canvas extension to add some space on the left side of the image. I was impressed how well the generated margin matched the real foliage.

OM-1
ƒ/6.3
400mm
ISO 3200
1/2000 sec

Peregrine Falcon Fledgling

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