Morning watch 10-29-13
By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK
We had a killing frost last night-as I left for my watch the temperature was a cold 27 degrees (F) 3 (C) but the sun came up and shone brightly
My first sighting was Dot.Ca (DC) on the Mercury money bag (MMB) at 7:29am. He left soon after flying east across the river and going behind the Hyatt Hotel where I lost sight of him.
I drove to the east side looking for DC but I didn’t find him. At 8am I found a falcon on the northeast corner of the 20th floor of Kodak Office (KO). Parked on State St. near Platt St. I was having trouble identifying it as it didn’t seem dark enough to be Beauty and not white enough to be DC. I ended up tweeting that it was Beauty because I didn’t see a heart shape on the malar stripe.
About 5 minutes later cam watcher Donna (thank you) reported a falcon on the MMB so I drove over to check it out thinking if I found out who it was then I’d know who was on KO. It was Beauty and she flew off going southeast so I returned to KO and parked on Mill St. to observe who I thought was DC.
<Beauty> 
The more pics I looked at of the KO falcon the more doubt I had that it was DC-it didn’t perch like him, there was no heart, it had a very dark helmet and I had never seen DC or any other falcon on this particular corner.
Finally around 8:22am I got the proof I needed when this PEFA gave me some leg shots-there were no bands on either leg.
20 minutes later this unbanded male judging by size walked around the corner out of the sun and into the shade and showing his back. I had to drive down past Brown St. on State St. to find him-he blended in well.
He turned around to face me and stretched, then he got settled for a while.
Suddenly around 9:10am I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye. On the east side (where the unbanded tiercel had been) was 2 pigeons marching toward that northeast corner of the 20th floor on Kodak Office. I’m saying to myself-self, they’re going to walk right in front of that falcon! Sure enough, the lead pigeon hit that corner where they could see each other and off went the first pigeon followed by the 2nd pigeon as the PEFA took off as well. The pigeons were flying in a frenzy as they do when a Peregrine Falcon is within inches of them and the poor tiercel just wanted to get away. He flew right between them heading north and didn’t come back.
I drove down Lake Ave. in that direction and never found him-checked Hawkeye and Seneca Towers as I was close by but found nothing. Drove thru downtown and saw nothing except the Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus is in town and the Court St. Bridge was blocked off for their trucks. On my way to the Brighton site (BS), I witnessed a fender bender accident on Mt. Hope Blvd. Onward to BS where after a few days Pigott was finally gracing me with her presence. She was perched on the southeast corner of the southeast extension preening.
I shared space with Miss Pigott for about 20 minutes when a double propeller military helicopter came flying toward BS from the east. I zeroed in on a spot to shoot the copter and as I panned it across the building I noticed Pigott was gone and so was the helicopter. It amazes me how close aircraft fly over the BS building (the airport is very close there) and I’m sure that’s probably why Pigott took off. I sure would if I saw something like that coming at me! So after Pigott didn’t return I left for downtown-stopping at a drug store on the way for a couple things when I witnessed a woman stick a candy bar down the front of her shirt. I was having quite the watch-sheesh!
So when I got downtown I searched but came up short on finding a falcon but I found window washers on the northeast side of OCSR to end my watch at 11am. I saw all 3 resident Rochester Peregrine Falcons, a bonus unbanded tiercel and some different stuff. After a watch like that how could I not be smiling!?! 🙂
Click on the links below to view more pics and videos
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqi4U
October 29th, 2013 at 8:36 PM
MAK, I read today’s Morning Watch while watching NCIS, and I have to say that your report was more exciting!
October 29th, 2013 at 9:09 PM
That’s funny Pat! 🙂