By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

I really needed to get out to look for some falcons.  Life has stopped me from doing this as often as I love to do.  🙂

I started my watch at noon and ended it at 6:15 pm.  A long day spent with falcons, friends and lots of fresh air!

BS was my first stop.  After searching the building thoroughly, I did not see or hear any falcons.  My next stop was downtown where I found DC on the south side of the OCSR, top Ibeam.  Thank you Pat for verifying that Beauty was in the nest box on the eggs.  Dot.ca was in hunt mode.  Just after I arrived, he stooped down the face of the building and then chased two pigeons across the river.  He returned to the top Ibeam and  then raced to the east, past the Xerox Tower.  Then back high overhead, heading west.  I lost him in the bright sunlight, but he soon returned to the top IBeam.  Again, he was off!  Again heading east.  It wasn’t long before he returned landing on the OCSR top Ibeam.  This time with prey.  A successful hunt!  Whatever he caught, it wasn’t big.  It didn’t take him long to complete his meal.  He rested for awhile and then flew to the nest box.

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

Dot.ca went into the nest box to take his turn on the eggs and Beauty came out.  She flew around a bit, stretching her wings, and then settled on the top IBeam of OCSR for a good preen.

*

*

*

*

*

It was a very windy day!

*

*

*

*

*

Beauty looked like she was settled in, so I headed north to check on the ST falcons.  I parked in the Maplewood Park parking lot to check things out from the west side of the river.  There I met fellow watchers Dana and Lou. They had seen one flying over the river, so we decided to watch from the south side of the Veteran’s Bridge.  The tiercel (male) put on quite the flight show for us.  He is an incredible flyer.

*

*

*

*

*

The juvie female joined him and landed on the IBeam on the south side of the Veterans Bridge.

*

*

*

*

*

That’s when Lou yelled out that there were three falcons.  The juvie on the bridge and two in the air.  We could hear kakking fill the air.  The juvie took off and she and the tiercel escorted the 3rd one to the east.  It happened too fast to tell if the 3rd was a female or male, or a juvie or adult.  About a 1/2 hour later first the juvie female returned and landed on the NE corner of the ST apartment building.  Soon after, the male returned.

Then both took to  the sky and went into hunt mode.  The tiercel returned with prey and landed on ST.  The juvie female wanted to share, but the tiercel had other ideas.  He took the food to the Veterans bridge where he prepped his meal and cached the remainder.  We were happy to see Dan walking towards us.  This was his first time seeing these falcons.  Dana and Lou had to leave, but I decided to stay with Dan until 6:15 pm.  The falcons again took to the sky, floating on the high winds, kiting above the building and river gorge.  Just beautiful!  I couldn’t help but notice that the tiercel had a split wing tip on his right wing.  That reminded me of another falcon I used to watch.

Dan and I ended our watch, happy to have seen these gorgeous falcons.  It reminded us so much of our days on the pedestrian bridge, watching the falcons from the Kodak Tower flying in the river gorge near High Falls.

*

*

*

*

*

Goodnight everyone!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2014 at 11:02 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.