By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

This morning when I arrived on the Broad St. Bridge(BSB) Dan was by himself and when I asked what the morning scoop was he told me that Orion had flown thru earlier. Apparently Orion,as Dan put it was” tearing up the turf ” this morning going after everything in his flight path up river. LarryO stopped for a brief time before leaving for work. Then Dans’ daughter Katrina came by to see her dad for a few minutes before going to her job in the Bausch&Lomb building. Well after an hour into my watch having not seen a falcon I decided to try my luck and see if Beauty was on HSBC. I made the trek to the east side and I wasn’t disappointed for she was there on the north side of HSBC.

I shared space with my favorite Peregrine for about 5 minutes when she took off and flew straight down Broad St. toward the river and the Times Square area. Off I went after her and found the Beautyful one  under the northeast wing of the Times Square building(TSB). I first spotted her up there from the intersection of Clinton and Broad St. then I walked down to below the TSB to get up close and personal. She totally checked me out!

20 minutes later I heard the familiar sound of Orions’ voice as Beauty flew off with him to the east where I lost them behind the Phillipone building.

Be sure to click on the pics for the full version

So I went up to the BSB and found Beauty on the base of Mercury just as Orion flew up to her she ducked out the back side and then they both vanished behind the Thomson Reuters building.

Orion

Sheesh I was starting to get a complex with them leaving me- like they didn’t want me to see them! Ha, lucky for me I don’t give up  easily and as I suspected when I checked the Frontier Communications Tower(FCT) from the bridge I saw a falcon on the 2nd arm of that tower. I spotted a Cormorant in the river and stopped to film it as it kept looking up. Now at the time I didn’t hear him but when I played the video on my computer I found out what the cormorant was looking up at-Orion singing a song. Now how I missed that I have no idea! lol

Anyway, I walked over to City Hall and on the way I spotted a beautiful female Cardinal in a bush on the front lawn of the Rochester Plaza Hotel. My favorite songbird so I had to stop and take a pic and I could see that the falcon was now on the top arm of FCT. When I got to the FCT, initially I thought it was Orion on the arm but after looking at my pics on the computer I realize it was Dot.Ca(DC) I found Beauty on the top beam of the lower red section of the tower looking pretty sleepy and DC was looking down at her as she was directly below him.

DC stooped off to the east over the river like a rocket and returned just as fast landing on the 2nd arm northeast side of FCT. Now I took a walk down the alley behind the Frontier building to see the front of DC and I found a couple of poison rat traps along the way. All I could think of was all the Red-tailed Hawks in Central Park that have died from eating poisoned rats making me very thankful that Peregrines don’t eat rats! I then went up to the top of the Sister Cities garage for a better view of my surroundings and naturally as soon as I got settled in DC flew off very fast to the west. I followed him as far as I could until he went poof into the horizon. 10 minutes later Beauty was gone too! Here we go again!! I left the garage and made my way back to Exchange St. where I found DC under the northwest wing of the TSB. After a few minutes he flew up and perched on the gridwork above him.

DC now has a little color on his front especially when he is in the shade as it shows in my pics today. It can be very confusing when trying to ID our falcons these days. DC jumped back down to the ledge and I decided it was time to end my watch. I wish I had seen more of Orion but I gotta smile for having seen all 3 of our downtown Rochester Peregrine Falcons today! 🙂

Click the links below for pics and videos from my watch

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWrHog

http://youtu.be/8qecmR-K6zM
http://youtu.be/yUlFzHTWgD8
http://youtu.be/E87em7pExJI
http://youtu.be/B-2We3otnWQ

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2012 at 4:37 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.