By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The starting temperature was 63 (F) 17 (C) with overcast conditions

A sad morning for our community as fallen Officer Daryl Pierson is laid to rest. He was a member of the Rochester Police Dept. shot and killed in the line of duty a week ago today. Thousands of law enforcement officers from around the country, including Canada, have gathered downtown to attend his funeral service at the Blue Cross Arena. Thank you for your ultimate sacrifice sir! I dedicate this report to you and those who loved you, which is many!

Click on my pics to see the full version

I began my watch this morning at Seneca Towers with Billie. I spotted her on the west side roof railing-couldn’t miss her really-she is a big girl.

She did a little preening but mostly was looking over the area before her. At 7:05am she spread her wings, flapped a few times and took off southward bound over the tree tops on the east side of the river.

I got a shot of Billie just before she disappeared behind the trees. I waited to see if she would return, then I  checked the perimeter of the building, but never saw her again.

I went south to the Driving Park bridge to check the Kodak Hawkeye plant but no sightings there either. I did check out the lower falls while I was there. The river was flowing slowly over them giving a view of all the ledges underneath the falls.

I made my way downtown and spotted Beauty from State St. on the northeast cube of the Frontier Communications Tower. I drove over to Fitzhugh St. in front of the Sister Cities parking garage and then I noticed Dot.Ca (DC) on top of the large disk eating.

<Click it 

The Beautyful one preened as her mate had his breakfast across from her.

<Click it 

At 7:55am DC finished eating and flew over to one of the support beams for the disk he had been on. Beauty watched him as he was now lower than her on FCT-they both preened. I got his flight over on my snippet movie.

I left them to have a look around downtown at all the activity for the funeral service before going over to check the Brighton site. Nothing there so I returned to FCT to find that DC had left but Beauty was still on the northeast cube. I then went to the Andrews St. bridge (ASB) to check the south side of the OCSR elevator shaft-DC was not there and I couldn’t check the north side because there was nowhere to go to do so. Roads were closing-I did get a few shots of police gathering on the Broad St. bridge from ASB.

RIP Officer Daryl Pierson…

I checked Hawkeye again, the Kodak research building and Seneca Towers but found no PEFAs as I ended my watch at 9:15am. Seeing 3 of our Rochester Peregrine Falcons made me smile  amongst the sadness I feel for our fallen policeman! 🙂

Click on the links below to view todays videos

http://youtu.be/o7elQd_4CuE

http://youtu.be/F0iZmFpylVs

http://youtu.be/J8ogE6f1uDU

http://youtu.be/s4wH9luhyCI

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2014 at 12:18 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.