Friday Late Afternoon/Evening Falcon Watch – 3/13/15
By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.
3:00 to 7:00 pm
With temperatures near 50 degrees (F) and sunshine, I decided to go downtown for a falcon watch after work on Friday. As I was walking to my car, a sure sign of Spring, floated overhead. A Turkey Vulture! My first of the year.
Before heading downtown, I checked out the west end of Kodak Park. No falcons found there.
My first stop downtown was Kodak Office. There were no falcons on the Kodak Tower. From the front of the Frontier Field Stadium, I had a nice view of the downtown area. It didn’t take long for me to find Beauty and Dot.ca. They were both on the north side of OCSR on the top IBeam.
Dot.ca walked around the corner to the south side, so I headed over to the Broad St Bridge. From there, I could see him at the west corner. Then he was gone.
I got out of my car to check out the river below. There was a lot of open water now and lots of ducks, gulls and other water birds out fishing, sleeping and walking around. One Ring-bill Gull was intently watching the ducks dive, hoping one would come up with a fish he could steal.
Here are some of the other birds enjoying the river.
Beauty flew in and landed on top of the Mercury statue. I looked up at the nest box and saw that Dot.ca was there.
Beauty took off, heading east, past Midtown Plaza. When I looked up at the nest box, Dot.ca was gone.
She wasn’t gone long, returning to the base of the Mercury statue. Just before I could take a picture, she walked around to the far side of the base. I headed down to Aqueduct St (aka “the hole”). From there I had a nice view of Beauty.
Kathy O joined me on the watch. She had checked out the BS location and found no falcons there. There was a basketball game at the Blue Cross Arena and it was getting very crowded. Lots of folks were passing us, asking what we were looking at. All were thrilled to see Beauty. We were entertained by bagpipers playing out in front of the arena. They were awesome. Kathy took a quick look around the area and found Dot.ca on the Widow’s Walk. She had seen him take off heading east and rejoined me to watch Beauty.
As we were listening to Amazing Grace, Beauty took off and headed north west. Kathy and I split up to look for Beauty and Dot.ca, but neither of us could find them.
It was time to check out Seneca Towers (ST). I was starting to lose light, so I headed over to Maplewood Park, where I had a view of the north and west sides of St. I had just tweeted that I could not see any falcons there when one flew in from the south and landed on the tallest antenna on the south end of the building.
This falcon took off and flew over the building, landing on the west side railing near the north end. A 2nd falcon arrived and landed on the northwest corner.
The 2nd falcon took off and landed next to the one on the west side railing.
Based on behavior, I believe that this was Billie and 99, but I was watching from quite a distance, across the river. I was too far away to positively ID either falcon.
Just as the sun was starting to set, 99 took off on a hunt, heading east. It wasn’t long before he returned, with prey landing on the northeast corner. Billie remained on the west side railing.
This is where I left the ST falcons at the end of my Friday Falcon Watch. I was happy to have seen all 4 Rochester Falcons. All was peaceful and quiet in our falcon’s world!
