By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

I hope everyone had a very Happy Easter!  Easter Sunday is notoriously a day that bad things happen.  Today it was pretty much business as usual for our downtown duo.  Except for a late afternoon visit by a 3rd falcon. My falcon watch was broken into two parts.

Morning Falcon Watch

My morning watch was very quiet.  It started out very cold with temps in the mid-20’s, blue sky and bright sunshine.  Beauty and Dot.ca were very active.  Dot.ca was on the base of Mercury, prepping food for Beauty who was inside the nest box. They both did a lot of flying and Dot.ca was hunting from the pan cam (aka Camera #1) near the nest box on the Times Square Bldg (TSB). Here are some pictures I took during my morning watch.

Dot.ca prepping food on the base of Mercury for Beauty.

I moved up to Falcon Central, which is on Broad St, closer to the TSB.  Larry O and Harold stopped by for a quick visit.

Dot.ca at the nest box with his food offering.

Beauty accepted Dot.ca’s food gift and took it to the top IBeam of OCSR (west corner).  Dot.ca moved up to Camera #1 aka the pan cam.

I decided it was time to move down to Aqueduct St (aka “the hole”).  From there I had a nice view of both Beauty and Dot.ca.

Beauty took off from OCSR and took a nice flight around the area.

Beauty landed on the ledge below the northeast wing on the Times Square Bldg.  Her crop was very full.  Dot.ca remained on the pan cam.

Dot.ca took off and flew up to Beauty.  They copulated (mated).  Dot.ca flew over to the OCSR and Beauty remained soaking up the sun under the northeast wing.  The new light doesn’t seem to bother her at all.

Beauty returned to the nest box and Dot.ca returned to the pan cam.  All was quiet and peaceful Easter Sunday morning.  I left Beauty and Dot.ca to check on our other pair over at Seneca Towers.

By this time, the temps were up in the 60’s (F) (they would reach the 70’s by the end of the day).  It was a gorgeous day.  I checked out Seneca Towers from the west side of the river.  From there I had a great view of the apartment building and the river gorge.  I kept hearing the call of a Peregrine from below the treeline in front of me.  I looked and looked and finally found a falcon in a tree below me, closer to the river.  Just as I put my camera up to take a picture, the falcon took off!  Darn!  lol  This falcon headed north following the river and under the bridge.  I attempted to find it on the other side of the bridge, but had no luck.  When I returned to the south side of the bridge, I saw a falcon flying over Seneca Towers.  It landed on the window ledge at the north end of the building.  Not sure if it was Billie or Seth.  It was time to end my morning watch after checking the Medley Ctr and finding no falcon there.

Late Afternoon Falcon Watch

I really hadn’t planned on going downtown again in the afternoon. But after hearing Beauty’s repeated alarm calls on the live streaming video, I decided it was time to check it out.  So after eating my ham dinner, which was very yummy, I headed downtown to see what was going on.

When I first arrived, Dot.ca was on top of pan cam and Beauty was nowhere to be found.

I was down in the hole, when Dot.ca took off heading southeast, very fast.  I lost sight of him and headed up to the Broad St Bridge.  Fellow watcher and good friend Dan was sitting on the bridge.  He had not seen Dot.ca take off.  Lisa McK joined us and we kept watch on the area, hoping that Beauty and Dot.ca would return.  At that time of day, the sun was almost directly in our eyes when we looked west, making it hard to see.

After awhile, Dot.ca returned to the nest box. A little while after that, Beauty returned and landed on the nest box platform. They both came out.  Beauty to the base of Mercury and Dot.ca to the OCSR, 2nd IBeam down.

Dan, Lisa and I were enjoying the beautiful afternoon warmth and watching the hawks passing overhead on their migration. At first we thought this was what had Beauty and Dot.ca on edge.

A Rough-Legged Hawk passing over on its migration.

At 5:30 pm, Beauty headed back to the nest box and Dot.ca landed at the top of the Times Square Bldg on the southeast wing ring.  He flew south towards the jail communication tower.  A few minutes later, he came back with prey, landing on the base of Mercury.

We were joined by Joyce and Brian H.  All was quiet until 6:15 pm when Beauty flew out of the nest box heading south.  Now we were looking directly into the sun.  We noticed that Beauty was not alone.  A quick check of the Times Square Bldg showed Dot.ca on the ledge above the nest box.  We had three falcons!  The 3rd falcon was as large as Beauty, so another female.

They flew around each other, but we never witnessed any contact between them.  I was following one of them, and watched it fly over OCSR heading north.  We lost sight of the 2nd one when some folks approached us asking what we were looking at. Dot.ca went to the nest box.  Brian and Dan had to leave, so Lisa, Joyce and I split up looking for Beauty.  We couldn’t find her, so we returned to falcon central.  At 6:40 pm, Beauty returned to the top Ibeam (west corner) on OCSR.  She was definitely on guard, watching for the return of the other female.  Thankfully she did not return.

A 7:00 pm, Beauty finally returned to the nest box and Dot.ca flew over to OCSR to take her spot.  All was finally quiet and peaceful.  Since then, all has been quiet.  Beauty laid her 3rd egg yesterday (Monday) afternoon.  Hopefully the other female will not return.  She may have been migrating through the area and got curious about our downtown pair.  Another Easter Sunday Falcon Watch done!  🙂

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 29th, 2016 at 3:21 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.