Fledge watch 8-17-13
By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK
Another banner day weather wise in our fair city with sunshine and blue skies. When I left the house at 5:45am the temp was 56 (F) 13 (C)
After checking the west and north sides of the city I ended up finding 2 falcons on the east side. Beauty was on the northwest corner of HSBC and there was a juvie on Midtown with its back to me. I believe it was one of the girls.
After 20 minutes the juvie was gone having left when I wasn’t looking. 5 minutes later Beauty flew off toward the west.
A check of downtown turned up nothing so Isabella and I went to the pedestrian bridge at High Falls. Dan was already there and Larry pulled up right after me with Harold. Dan found what looked like Dot.Ca (DC) on the north corner top ibeam of OCSR at 6:45am.
At 7am we noticed DC gone and half hour later he showed up on the northeast corner of the Kodak Office (KO)launchpad. At the same time I looked down on the north side of the bridge to see the Osprey in the island tree.
There were lots of fish coming to the surface of the river to snatch a bug and after 5 minutes or so our Osprey friend dove down and snatched one of those fish and flew northwest, doubled back toward us and went under the bridge where we lost sight of it.
While we were watching DC left KO and so Dan and Larry decided to call it a watch at around 7:45am. I left and stopped on the Andrews St. Bridge where I spotted DC eating on a brick building that is for lease by the Philipone people on State. St. across from the Rochester Plaza Hotel. Beauty has also been seen eating on this same building in the past. As I was parking he moved back on the ledge where I could only see his head and that heart shaped malar stripe.
A few minutes later he came back out in plain view and started eating his small package again. It looked fresh so I assume he caught it off of KO.
You must click on my pics to see the full version
A few minutes later he stopped eating and walked 10 ft to the south, stopped and started looking around.
A couple minutes of that and he was off to the northeast out of view.The next series of pics is the progression of his take off.
Click it
I drove straight down State St. and found DC on the KO launchpad northeast corner again.
I left DC and checked downtown to no avail so I drove to Brighton where I had the same result-no PEFAs. I returned to downtown and found only one falcon-the Beautyful one! I went to the hole (Aqueduct St. ) where I could see only the top half of her and what a gorgeous top half it is!
She was on the top ibeam west corner of OCSR and it was time for me to leave so I ended my watch at 9am. I would like to have seen all 3 juvies but hopefully tonight they will be around when I pick up New Jersey forum member Ginny Karyn from the train station who is going to be staying with me until Wednesday. There will definitely be smiles if that happens! 🙂
I have only one video link today-just click and view
