Tip on ID of juvenile peregrines in flight: If you can’t see anything except their shape and they are dark colored, look for a pale cream-colored band at the tip of the tail. This is easy to see if they’re backlit. The juvies have this feature, the adults don’t. Other birds of prey, including some buteos, have a tail band too so you have to ID by shape as well.

For the last 3 weekends, though, I’ve also regularly watched, from my front porch, a pair who seem to be hunting together up the hill from my house in Forest Hills, this would be slightly northeast of the Channel Four broadcast tower near the Parkway East Forest Hills exit. Could this be E2 and Dorothy five or so miles from Oakland? Or would this year’s newly fledged birds still be loitering in the near eastern ‘burbs. I’m puzzled at their consistent presence, since there seem to be few pigeons in the area (just lots of songbirds). It is near several parkway overpasses, however, so maybe there is a pretty good prey population beyond the trees towards the Westinghouse campus there before Churchill.

About the large, dark birds you saw soaring while on your road trip, my guess is they were turkey vultures.