By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

It started raining this afternoon, pouring rain with thunder and lightning.  Due to the heavy rains, I decided to head home for some dinner before attempting to drive downtown.  We really did need the rain, but I really wanted to head out for a Falcon Watch.  lol  At 6:30 pm, the rain lessened a bit.  This was my chance to at least check things out.  See if I could find our Falcons.

There was a lot of flooding on the roads leading to long lines of bumper to bumper traffic. Thankfully, the problems were all on the north bound traffic.  I was heading south and east.  I first checked out the Frontier Communication Tower (FCT).  Nothing there.  I decided to head down to to Broad St next, but west of the Times Square Bldg (TSB).  I immediately saw a small, very wet falcon sitting on the Widows Walk railing, west side.  Due to size, I thought this was definitely a male.  But was it Dot.ca or Orion.  I couldn’t tell for sure.  It was to dark, it was starting to rain harder again and the bird was soaking wet, making it tough to know if it was an adult or juvie.  I parked my car and watched this falcon look every which way.  Starlings and Pigeons were in this falcon’s airspace, and he was very interested.

Starlings covered the old church on the west side of the Widow’s Walk, which is on the NW side of the TSB.

At 7:00 pm, the falcon spread his wings and took off, fast!  He was heading south east.  By the time I arrived at the Broad St Bridge, the falcon was out of sight.  While I was tweeting this, I was joined by Kathy O.  We stood on the bridge looking at the high waters of the river below.  All the rain caused it to swell and there weren’t very many places for the ducks, geese and gulls to rest out of the water.  I saw no herons at all, after seeing so many over the past couple weeks.  We both searched the fog shrouded buildings (I could not see the top of the Xerox bldg), we finally found the male falcon high up on the jail communication tower.  As it started to pour he stooped off heading south over the Cornhill area.  We never did see him come back up.  Kathy and I ran to our cars to wait out the rain.  Kathy decided to check out the FCT and I headed downtown to search the buildings there.

From the Geva Theater parking lot, I spotted a larger falcon sitting on the south side of the HSBC building below the railing.  This was a large, very drenched, female.  Had to be Beauty.  I watched her for a little while, but she didn’t look like she was going anywhere soon, so I returned to the BSB where I met up with Joyce.  Just before she arrived, I spotted a small falcon very low in the framework of the jail communication tower.

I decided to put my camera away since we were standing out in the rain and it was really starting to get dark.  My camera at this point was pretty much useless.  Joyce and I stood in the rain on the BSB and watched as the male low on the jail communication tower spread his wings and took off, again stooping to the south over Cornhill.  After a few seconds out of our view, he veered back towards us and flew directly over us, cutting back towards Mercury.  We really thought he was going to land there, but at the last minute, the landing gear were pulled up and the near landing quickly turned into a stoop down low over the river.  He chased a small bird across the river, and we lost him behind the trees at Aqueduct Park.  He reappeared with nothing clutched in his talons and flew up to the 2nd Ibeam down on the OCSR.  In the dark, we could just barely make him out.  By this time we were fairly certain we had been watching Orion practicing his hunting skills.  We didn’t have a positive ID, but due to size and behavior, we were pretty sure it was him.

Kathy O rejoined us.  She had no Falcons on the FCT.  After a few moments of standing in the rain and chatting, we decided to call it a night.  On the way home, I drove closer to the OCSR, but I still couldn’t confirm that Orion was up there.  As always, I checked out KP, but had no luck finding KPT.  Joyce told me she stopped at BS on the way downtown and could not find Pigott.

Even Falcon Watching on a dark, wet evening is a joy for all of us.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and all of the Rochester Falcons will be seen by the Watchers, who I’m sure will all be out and about and keeping their eyes to the sky.  You should too!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012 at 10:53 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.