14 September 2026
On Sunday Malcolm Kurtz alerted me to a most unusual eBird checklist of four peregrine falcons that joined a ship in the open ocean at the Sargasso Sea. He found the checklist when he looked at ocean sightings of peregrines on eBird’s species map and clicked in the Atlantic.
Willeke and Frits Bosveld – van Rijn observed the peregrines for four days in late October 2023. Here’s an excerpt from their description at https://ebird.org/checklist/S154471207. Visit the checklist to see their photos.
4 [peregrine falcons] Observed from off our ship the MS Rotterdam sailing from Amsterdam to Fort Lauderdale via the Azores and Half Moon Cay Bahamas. They were with us for four days. 18 October – 21 October 2023. …
These birds knew exactly how to survive in the far distant open ocean. (On the 18th we had more or less entered de Saragossa Sea.)
They were Catching Flying Fish (see photograph) and small migrant birds or sea birds lured to the ship’s lights at night time. On one day one Peregrine Falcon attacked a Masked Booby. The latter turned around, squeaked, and dove off. The Peregrine followed but had lost too much momentum to be able to catch the Masked Booby.
They would hunt and catch off the ship. And pluck, and rest on the ship. …It appeared that one of the Juveniles stayed close to one adult as if it was learning the hunting techniques. …
18 October ship’s coordinates. Here they had first come on board. 28.9716N, -54.78708W
— from eBird checklist https://ebird.org/checklist/S154471207
They ate flying fish !!
Who were these peregrines? Where did they come from? Where were they going? Why was a juvenile with an adult?
In late September around the equinox, peregrine falcons that breed in Arctic Canada leave on their long migration to South America. Their time in the Arctic is so short that sometimes their youngsters are not independent so a youngster stays with its parent. They often travel south over the Atlantic, following flocks of potential prey which they capture in flight and eat on the wing. Read more at I’m On a Tight Schedule.
By mid-October these Arctic peregrines are streaming past the Florida Keys Hawk Watch where observers routinely count 100+ peregrines a day. See A Hundred Peregrines a Day!
Some of the falcons counted at Florida Keys had flown further out to sea, then course-corrected to the west to make their transit over Panama on thei way to the west coast of South America. I learned about this migration route in 2008 from the Southern Cross Peregrine Project, Falcon Research Group (no longer on the web). FRC tracked an Arctic peregrine, Elizabetha, on her journey south from Baffin Island, Canada in 2008.
She began her journey on September 23, two days after the equinox. …
On October 17th she spent the night in northern Maine at Moosehead Lake. The next day she began a 2-day power flight that set all records, flying 1,416 miles in the most amazing trip anyone has ever seen [described below].
She left Maine on October 18th and was clocked near Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts at 5:00pm, but she didn’t stop. Eight hours later, at 1:00am October 19th, she was nine miles off the coast of New Jersey flying south at 55mph. She had a good tail wind and – though we didn’t know it – she planned to fly all night. From the coast of New Jersey until she roosted 24 hours later at Ft Pierce, Florida she flew 954 miles over the open Atlantic. Don McCall speculates on the FRG blog that she was helped by the north winds behind Hurricane Omar.
— from Going the distance
My hunch is that the MS Rotterdam peregrines were from the Arctic on their way to (maybe) Chile. Here’s one of the many photos of the juvenile.
Thanks to Malcom Kurtz for sending me the checklist. Wow! Peregrines always amaze me.
p.s. The peregrine video at top (by Mango Julee on YouTube) was taken in the Labrador Sea off the coast of Canada. Peregrines join ships anywhere that it’s convenient.