By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The starting temperature this morning at 6am was 63 (F) 17 (C) with mostly cloudy skies

Click on my pics to see the full version

I was surprised when I turned onto the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) and didn’t see Dan sitting in his chair-hopefully he’s ok. The new fledglings made it easy on me today as there was 1 under the northeast wing of the Times Square building (TSB), 2 0n Mercury and one on Widows Walk (WW). The 2 on Mercury flew to the northeast wing ledge and there was a bit of a tug of war over a small piece of food.

Nor’Easter and Nettie took off at the same time when they spotted the Beautyful one to the east. I found Beauty on the northeast corner of  Bausch & Lomb and could see the 2 juvies flying around above Xerox and Midtown. Suddenly Beauty was gone-turns out she had caught a pigeon. I started making my way down Broad St. to the bridge and as I crossed the intersection at South Ave. I glanced out my window and right above me was Beauty, pigeon in talons with Nettie and Nor’Easter on her tail. I hit the gas beat them to the brmiddle of the bridge, jumped out the car and got a shot of them just as they landed on the base of Mercury.

At first it seemed that Beauty was going to feed beak to beak but they got a little rough so she left it for them and flew off. A 3rd juvie landed briefly and left as well. There was some squabbling over the food but they ended up sharing. A few minutes later Beauty landed on the northeast corner of the base to supervise. After a bit she had a tug of war with Nor’Easter and won-she then ate a fair share before having to stop and feed Nor’E because he was yelling at her and carrying on. She fed him beak to beak while Nettie ate some food then finished up and moved down closer to watch her mom and brother.

Dot.Ca landed under the northeast wing of TSB at some point while I was watching the feeding and he flew off to the top ibeam south corner of OCSR. Nor’E had his fill and walked away with a full crop so Beauty ate some more. Both juvies flew off to the west, DC left OCSR and Beauty remained on Mercury as I took off to look for the kids.

As I pulled onto Bank Place to go to the hole I spotted DebbieH walking in my direction. She told me she saw a juvie land on the roof of OCSR. I took a look with my binocs and sure enough there was one up there just barely visible. After Deb left for work I checked Widows Walk and found a juvie there and Beauty was still on the base of Mercury.

I had to run an errand and when I returned it would be a long while before I found a juvie on the 2nd arm south side of the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT). I couldn’t ID it as the legs were not showing. I drove around the city 3 times only to find an adult on OCSR with its back to me-I think it was DC and the juvie on FCT.

I figured after eating, the juvies were napping so I called it a watch at 10am as I had things to do. I believe the fledglings are flying well enough that they don’t need to be watched all the time now. As I left downtown Rochester a smile came across my face, thinking about having raced falcons on the Broad St. Bridge! 🙂

Click on the links below to see more pics and videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqjtU

http://youtu.be/71xxNXZWzIw

http://youtu.be/jjg-arUm2c4

http://youtu.be/LprSAMrw8oc

http://youtu.be/O5aErT_S1kQ

http://youtu.be/gXrlAE1ym8E

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2014 at 6:27 PM and is filed under Fledge Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.