By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

I arrived downtown at about 3:45  pm, to find what I thought were only two Peregrine Falcons on the Times Square Bldg.  Dot.ca was up on top of the SE wing ring and who I thought was Beauty, was on the SE wing ledge.  It didn’t take me long to figure out there was a third falcon there too.

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This 3rd falcon started chasing the falcon on the wing ledge and they both headed over to the jail communication tower.  Based on size, these were both females and they were battling.

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They both flew back to the Times Square Bldg, one landing on the ledge above the nest box and one continued to fly above the building.

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They both took off again and headed towards the OCSR where one landed on top of the disk on top.

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Both Chased each other before heading back to the Times Square Bldg.  One landed on the SW wing ring and one on the NE wing ledge.

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Dana joined me and we watched the two females flying over the Xerox bldg.  They stayed close and stooped on each other.  It seemed to go on forever before a larger and smaller falcon (female and male) returned to the Times Square Bldg.  We think it was DC with one of the females.  I won’t even begin to guess which female was which.  It was quiet for awhile.  MAK joined the watch and then Pat.  Just as we thought, just maybe the 3nd female had left, there she was and the fight continued.  This time over OCSR and the Hyatt.  By this time it was getting too dark to take pics, so I just put my camera away and watched with my binoculars.  The two falcons moved to the OCSR, one landing on the top disk and one flying around.  As it grew darker, we could no longer see the falcons.  We assumed that they were both up on the OCSR, but we couldn’t be sure.

I called Kathy O to see if she could check the BS location when she left work and she did.  She checked every bump on the building, but it was dark and she could not find any falcons there.

At 5:30 pm, it was still quiet and very dark.  There was nothing more we could do until tomorrow morning when MAK, Dana and I am sure other Watchers will check things out.  I’ll be back down as soon as I am able.  Before I headed home, I drove over to the Radisson and checked out the elevator shaft and listened.  All was quiet.  Tomorrow is another day and I sure do hope it’s a peaceful one.  Goodnight everyone.

Oops, before I forget.  I’ll leave you with a short video that I took of both females falling from the Times Square Bldg locked together.  Neither was injured during the fall, but they sure did get really close to the street below before releasing each other.  All the shakiness at the end is me running towards where the falcons came down before realizing with a very large sigh of relief  that they had both gotten away safely.  It shows one falcon diving towards the south side of the building.  You have to look very closely to see them and you can here there vocalizations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvF-czgx5f8&feature=youtu.be

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 4th, 2013 at 11:04 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.