By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Upon my arrival downtown this morning I could see no falcons anywhere from the Broad St. bridge(BSB) so I took a walk over to the east side of our fair city. As soon as HSBC came into view I spotted part of a falcon hanging over the roof edge on the north side. Beauty has always liked to to hunt from HSBC in the early morning and who could blame her with all the pigeons that reside in that neck of the woods! I kept walking until I got to Chestnut and Broad St. where there is all kinds of construction activity taking place making for a lot of noise and traffic congestion. I set myself up and started clicking away with my camera.

Beauty was plucking away at her prey near the northwest corner making a feather cloud for all the pigeons in the area to see and take warning. In one of my videos you can see pigeons flying in and out of the frames. After 15 minutes she flew off and disappeared behind Midtown heading west toward the Times Square building.

I started heading back to the BSB stopping below Xerox where the TSB came into view and as I looked through my trusty binocs I could see a falcon under the northeast wing and it appeared to be eating. I thought it must be Beauty but then at that very moment I got a text from Donna saying that Beauty was at the nest box.

Please click pics for full version

I thought maybe Beauty had seen Orion and took her food to him but when I finally got over there I could see that it was Dot.Ca(DC) eating up on the TSB. Wow did Beauty give him her food or did she stash it and he found it? I swear I could use jets on my sneakers sometimes so I don’t miss important stuff like that! lol Beauty was on top of cam 4 and I think she might have wanted DC to come down to the nest box for a bow and bonding refresher as she was whining a bit but he wasn’t interested.

Beauty hopped down to the deck and DC went to the back side of the northeast wing ledge out of sight. He left at some point but I can’t say when cuz I wasn’t positioned to see it. Beauty meanwhile stayed at the nest box until around 8:30am when she flew over to OCSR heading straight for the 2nd ibeam west corner and pulled back at the last second continuing on behind Crossroads and out of view to the west. I figured a trek to City Hall was in order so I packed up and headed over. I found Beauty on the northeast cube of the Frontier Communications tower(FCT).

She napped a little and preened a little for half hour or so before working her way into the middle of the structure where I had a hard time finding her as usual. Then she perched on a beam behind the northwest cube. After 20 minutes more she got antsy and flew out going southwest. I left to go back to the TSB area and on the way Donna reported that Beauty was at the nest box and she was whining again thus making me think she wanted DC to come to the nest box again for bonding duties. I couldn’t see her until I went up on the BSB and then I spotted DC as well on the top ibeam at the south corner of OCSR.

I walked down to the hole(Aqueduct St.) for a closer watch standing by the back of Keybank. 10 minutes later he stooped down toward the river and that would be the last I saw of him as he quickly vanished behind buildings. A common problem when you are in the hole is being surrounded by buildings so you miss a lot when the falcons fly off because a building blocks your view! There were guys power washing and painting at the back of the Phillipone building as I passed by. I got a text from Donna 20 minutes later that Beauty had left the nest box so I went up on the BSB one more time to have a look around. I could find no falcons around and decided to call it  a watch. Before I left to catch my bus I took a few pics down in the river for even when there’s not a falcon to be seen nature comes through and puts a smile on your face! 🙂

Click links below for more pics and videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWrIUg

http://youtu.be/-CYLO1wF4PU
http://youtu.be/m-L2DuD8GQY
http://youtu.be/j_btEqWZtDs
http://youtu.be/_fUNrdVTcOE
http://youtu.be/HXAdPLNmYDw
http://youtu.be/ycj23Aypxck

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2012 at 4:33 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.