Peregrine falcon on Cannon Cliff
— — the bird the cliff brought back.
Not only on a wall.
“A peregrine on the wing above one of the tallest cliffs in the Northeast. Cannon's east face drops a thousand feet over Interstate 93. The falcons disappeared from the East in the DDT years and came back, slowly, to this exact wall. The Audubon Society of New Hampshire watches the ledges each spring. Climbers stay off the routes while the chicks are in the nest.
Peregrine falcon on Cannon Cliff, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cannon Cliff is the east face of Cannon Mountain in Franconia Notch State Park, in northern Grafton County. The wall rises roughly a thousand feet over Interstate 93 and is among the largest cliffs in the eastern United States. The Old Man of the Mountain, the granite profile that gave New Hampshire its state emblem, sat on this same ridge until it collapsed on May 3, 2003. The notch itself was carved by glaciers and runs north to south between Cannon and the Franconia Range, with Profile Lake and Echo Lake set into its floor.
Peregrines are the fastest animals on Earth, clocked above 240 miles per hour in a hunting stoop. Cannon gives them what they need: height, exposure, and clean updrafts off the notch. They hunt small birds from the cliff face and drive ravens away from the ledges. The Audubon Society of New Hampshire has monitored this aerie since the species began returning to the state in the 1980s, after DDT was banned and captive-bred birds were released along the eastern flyway.
The pair returns to Cannon each March. Eggs by April, chicks by late May, fledging through July. New Hampshire State Parks closes the standard rock-climbing routes on the cliff during the nest, typically April 1 to August 1, to keep climbers off the wall while the young are still in the air. By September the family has dispersed and the routes reopen. Winter belongs to ice climbers and to the wind that funnels through the notch off Lafayette and the Kinsman Ridge.