By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Our snow-less Winter continues!

I’ll start with a couple pics of Beauty and Dot.ca on the north side of OCSR that I took on December 21st.

Ok, on with my after Christmas falcon watch report.  The lighting was horrible, so I apologize for the poor quality pictures.

My friend and fellow falcon watcher Kathy O asked if I wanted to go out and look for falcons with her.  Of course I did.  It’s so rare, especially in the winter months, to have a companion on my watches.  🙂

After receiving a tweet from Larry O that there were two falcons out at the BS location, we decided that’s where we were going to start.

As we approached the building, we immediately saw two falcons side-by-side on the northwest corner of the building.  We attempted to find a spot where we could view both of them and hopefully get an ID.  I walked out onto the lawn and was able to see both falcons.

The larger female kept her back to us, and the smaller Tiercel refused to show his legs.  It did look like Dot.ca (DC).  Larry had seen DC take off from the Legacy Tower (LT) and head out towards the Brighton Site (BS).  Earlier, MAK reported seeing Beauty heading in the same direction while DC continued to eat on the LT.

Next stop, downtown to see if we could find Beauty and Dot.ca.  We drove all over downtown and could not find any falcons. Back to BS.  The two falcons were gone.

Back downtown, where we found both Beauty and Dot.ca together on the jail communication tower.

As we were driving closer first Beauty and then Dot.ca stooped straight down!  We were too close to see where they went, so the search was on.

We found Beauty on top of the Mercury statue and Dot.ca on the NW corner of the Widow’s Walk (WW).

Both were in hunt mode.  I love to watch these two tandem hunting.

There were a lot of smaller birds flitting around WW and Dot.ca was very interested.  Then a pigeon landed below him and left quickly realizing the danger from above.

Kathy and I decided to head up to the Broad St Bridge to get a better view of Beauty up on Mercury.

Soon after we arrived, Beauty took off and flew east.

A quick check of the Widow’s Walk.  Dot.ca was also gone.

Back to searching for our falcons!

We found them both on the Legacy Tower (the old B&L building) like bookends, one on each corner.

We were parked close to the building, so when they both took off, stooping directly over us heading west, we lost sight of them quickly.

Off we went to again search for them.  From the Broad St Bridge, we found Beauty on the base of Mercury.  Dot.ca had returned to the NW corner of the Legacy Tower.

There was a line-up of pigeons on the old RG&E building on the east side of the river.  They were all on alert!

Beauty took off!  She made a low pass over the river and the pigeons scattered! Beauty continued east and landed on the SW corner of the Legacy Tower, across from Dot.ca.

It was time for us to end our downtown falcon watch.  Both Beauty and Dot.ca were on the hunt together.

Kathy and I believe that it was Beauty and Dot.ca out at the BS location.  MAK had first seen Beauty head out in that direction and then Larry O followed Dot.ca out to that location, where he found two falcons on the building together.  When we arrived, they were both very comfortable with each other.  I just wish we had been able to get a positive ID on both of them.  Did you know that when Beauty first arrived in Rochester, we found her out at the BS location?  She spent a lot of time out there before coming downtown.

Our next stop was Seneca Towers, where we found Billie on the NW corner and Seth on the south side window ledge.

At the Medley Center, we had no luck finding Big Frank.  But, we did find the remains of her most recent meal.  Don’t worry, I won’t post a picture.  😀

I hope that all of you had a very Merry Christmas!  I’ll leave you with a picture of one of my favorite birds that I see quite frequently at the Medley Ctr, a Mockingbird.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 27th, 2015 at 10:30 AM 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.