By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

7:00 to 9:00 pm

Another warm summer evening here in Rochester, NY.  I arrived downtown at about 7:00 pm, meeting Brian and Susan C at the east end of the pedestrian bridge.  Dana had reported that Beauty, Tesh and Nor’easter were on the Kodak Tower on the 17th floor with food.  We hoped they would make it to the gorge this evening.   We walked towards the Kodak Tower and joined Dana on the east side of Kodak Office.  Beauty, Tesh and Nor’easter were right where Dana reported they were.  Beauty was attempting to control the food and the feeding of her two young ones.  That was proving to be difficult.  At times she was able to beak feed Tesh and Nor’easter, but most of the time, Tesh tried to keep the food to herself by spreading her large wings over the prey to mantle it.

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While feeding both Tesh and Nor’easter, Beauty ate her fill too.  She flew to the south end of the ledge and grabbed a wing, taking off with it.  Not so fast!  Nor’easter was off after her.  He attempted to grab the wing and it fell towards the lower roof below.  Nor’easter dove down, chasing the wing as it fell.  Because he went behind a building, we didn’t see what happened until he rose above the building holding the wing in his beak.  He caught it! Nor’easter landed on the southeast corner of Bldg 10, where he checked out his “catch”.  There wasn’t much, if any meat on the wing, so he soon picked it up with his beak and flew back up to the southeast corner of the 17th floor, where he returned the wing.

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After dropping the wing, Beauty had landed up on the southside top ledge where the large KODAK letters were located.  She was hanging out in front of the “A”.

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While all this was happening, we were joined by Shaky, Larry O and Joyce.  A before and after pic of the gathered watchers that I took.  🙂

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As we were losing light, first Tesh and then Nor’easter took off and flew over us heading east towards the gorge.

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We all headed in that direction.  From the west end of the bridge, I spotted something in what we all call “the falcon sucking tree” and it was moving.  Could it be a falcon?  We all moved down to the east end of the bridge, where we had a better view.  Yes!  There was a juvie falcon sitting in a dead tree that juts out over the river on the east side of the gorge wall.  It seems to be a spot that many of our falcons have found over the years.  It was a favorite hiding spot for Mariah.  The lighting was really bad, but here is a picture I was able to get.

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It was so nice to see a falcon there again.  We were not able to get a positive ID on this falcon, but Shaky was pretty sure that the feet were blue.  So probably Tesh or Nor’easter.  After awhile, the falcon flew out and back in, closer to the gorge wall.  We were all thinking that this juvie might be roosting there overnight.  I did call Dan to let him know that he might be out early enough to see this juvie tomorrow morning.

Oh, and while we were keeping an eye on the falcons on the Kodak Tower, Nettie was hanging out on the Frontier Communication Tower on the north side of the platform.  Dana had seen her earlier and she said that Nettie had a very full crop.  We did not see Dot.ca or Mercury this evening.

It was a wonderful evening to watch falcons again at Kodak and the gorge.  Goodnight and have a very nice evening everyone!  Happy Birthday Shaky!  🙂

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2014 at 11:42 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.