Close encounters

So yesterday morning, I was riding my bike to work, and I look up and see this large bird stooping straight towards me very fast. As in, rilly rilly fast. As in, before I realized I'd seen it, it flipped wing-end-on and swooped past me. More or less simultaneously, I felt the wind of a falcon's passage on my cheek and heard a dove on the curb beside me explode into flibbertypanic flight. I turned around and saw the distinctive wing profile and tail of a peregine as it swerved away, in a curve that precisely expressed its distain for idiots who come between it and its prey just as it's diving.

And only then, about a second after first bird, adrenaline kicked in. Somehow, I managed to not hit anything before my cardiovascular system had calmed down.

Whee!

---L.