By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Another gorgeous day with temps in the 70’s, bright sunshine and blue skies.  I arrived at the Hawkeye plant at 6:30 pm.  On my way Joyce had tweeted that she did not see Pigott at BS and shortly after Kathy O tweeted that she found Pigott on the cubby ledge on the west side of the building.  It just goes to show you that it’s all about timing.  lol

I drove around the Hawkeye plant and could not find any falcons there.  It was time to head downtown.

From the Broad St Bridge (BSB), I found Dot.ca on the south side of OCSR on the top IBeam at the south corner.  (7:02 pm)

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Dot.cat took off while I wasn’t looking, so I did not know where he headed.  I drove over to the Xerox Tower and found Beauty on the south side, on the 5th column in from the SE corner. (7:12 pm)

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Kathy texted that she was on the Broad St Bridge and Joyce was over at Hawkeye, having no luck finding the juvie.  I decided to head over to the BSB.  Kathy spotted a bird on top of the OCSR elevator shaft.  After checking it out closer, we both determined that it was in fact a Peregrine.  It was starting to get dark so it was impossible to ID this falcon.  The last falcon I saw on top of the elevator shaft, was a juvie.  (7:28 pm)

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Kathy and I were just getting ready to leave when we noticed that the falcon was gone.  It was really dark by this time and we were just able to see the falcon flying on the right side of OCSR.  It then flew towards us, fast and low over the river.  It was really hard to follow the falcon as it flew almost directly in front of us.  We saw the reason why as the falcon approached, chasing a large bird that crashed into the river with a large splash and a horrible scream.  The falcon pulled up and continued over the river heading west towards the Broad St Bridge. (7:42 pm)

We lost track of the Peregrine because our attention was on the bird that crash landed into the river in the dark.  It ended up on a pile of wood just below us.  Finally we were able to see that it wasn’t a duck, like we first thought.  It was the adult Black-crowned Night Heron.  The night hunter had been hunted and was extremely lucky to have escaped.  She didn’t seem injured at all, just had her feathers ruffled and dunked in river water.

We looked for the Peregrine, but couldn’t find it.  It was time to end our Watch. (7:50 pm)

I’ll leave you with a few pictures I took during my Watch tonight.  Be sure to click on any you would like to see larger.  Sorry to say it was way too dark to get a picture of the BCNH.  Good night everyone!

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and before I left home for my evening Watch, I had a visit from a gorgeous Red-tailed Hawk in my neighborhood.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 18th, 2013 at 10:59 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.