By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

This morning was overcast to start but the sun came out eventually and warmed things up after a chilly start with a temperature of 50 (F) 10 (C)

I couldn’t find any falcons downtown so  headed to Hawkeye (HE) to see if I could find a juvie. As I parked at the YMCA and looked toward the site I spotted a bump on the stack to the northwest of the building. I grabbed my binocs and could see that it was a falcon bump. I then grabbed my camera and took a pic-definitely a falcon tho the distance and lighting made for bad pics. Sooo I grabbed my scope and voila I could definitely say that the vertical feathers and brown coloring on the chest made this a juvenile falcon.

A couple minutes later it stooped down into the river gorge on the north side of the Driving Park Bridge (DPB). A minute later it was flying above the Hawkeye plant circling it and then landing on the west side roof-it didn’t have a catch from the stoop.

Seconds after landing it flew off to the north and didn’t return. Darn, still no ID but yay it hasn’t left the area yet! I stayed about 20 minutes and then returned to downtown finding Dot.Ca (DC) on the top ibeam north corner of OCSR.

Mr.Handsome started stretching in between looking around his territory for a breakfast bird.

I was parked on Bragdon St. next to the Radisson Hotel on the east side of the river but I wasn’t alone-also parked were pigeons and gulls on the hotels lower roof.

Click on my pics to see full version

I left DC around 8am to look for Pigott at the Brighton site but she was nowhere to be found so I returned to downtown hoping to find Beauty. No luck in finding the Beautyful one but I did come across DC on the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT). He was on the northeast corner of the platform railing looking around for a prey item. I parked in front of City Hall on Fitzhugh St.

DC stayed there for 45 minutes and then he snuck off the back of the railing to the north going into a stoop and returning less than a minute later with a small package. He did wave hi and bye before leaving! lol

Upon his return he landed on an east side beam just below the large satellite dish. I didn’t have a great angle on him so i drove around to the north end of the alley Montgomery Place next to the Open Door Mission. Back there I could only get silhouette pics because of the position of the sun.

I left DC to enjoy his meal and took a spin around the city to look for Beauty and once again I had no luck in finding her. I checked the Hawkeye plant one more time but no juvies were around. I ended my watch which featured DC with a splash of juvie thrown in at 9:30am. Keep smiling everyone! 🙂

Click on the links below to view some videos of DC

http://youtu.be/c2wogD70Txc
http://youtu.be/uEkgUFOkM8w
http://youtu.be/NoIOTBflJho

This entry was posted on Monday, September 9th, 2013 at 5:00 PM and is filed under Falcon Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.