By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Well the morning started dark and quiet but things sure picked up after a while.  Arriving downtown at 6:15 am with dark conditions I could see no bumps anywhere in the Broad St. bridge (BSB)vicinity so I took a stroll to the east side to check HSBC,Xerox,Midtown and Bausch&Lomb. I found no pefas but on the way back I took Court St. instead of Broad St. and as I approached I observed crows flying out of the trees in Washington Square Park. Hmm I said to myself after all the money and effort the city shelled out to rid the park of these creatures and now they’re right back in it. Not the 20,000 of last year but they are coming back, so what I wonder will the evil humans do next about this situation!?!

So upon returning to the BSB I stood on the north side looking down in the river as the pigeons were starting to stir and come out from below the bridge where they roost at night. I spotted a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron fishing below the RG&E substation in the river and 15 minutes later Dot.Ca(DC) landed under the southeast wing of the Times Square building(TSB).

You can see that his tail and wing feathers are a bit rough looking due to his molting and he also looks dark in this pic. About 5 minutes later LarryO tweeted that there was a falcon on HSBC most likely Beauty since I had DC on TSB. 15 minutes later DC flew to the Wilder building coming to rest on the green strip by the southwest corner.

I was down in the parking lot next to the Phillipone building and Larry was up on the BSB when I got a text from Donna saying Beauty was at the nest box so I turned to look and there she was-the Beautyful one!

Right after that DC flew off Wilder across to Mercury to perch on the heel of the statue.

I started to walk up on the bridge to take pics of DC with the sun behind me but I never made it for he flew off and the next time I saw him he was flying to the back of TSB. So I walked back down to where I had been by the Phillipone building and could see DC under the northwest wing of the TSB. Beauty was still by the main cam at the nest box when first DC took off and then Beauty toward OCSR where I saw a third falcon meet up with them. I couldn’t see all that took place because buildings were blocking my view but I did see Beauty(the largest of the 3) touch talons with one of the smaller pefas. Next they went low where I couldn’t see them,then I saw Beauty and another one come back into view where upon Beauty dive-bombed the other 2 or 3 times(not very aggressively) and then they all disappeared. I whipped up to the BSB to see if Larry had seen any of it and he told me one of them had food and that he thought there was a possible food exchange attempted before he lost 2 of them behind the Andrews St. apartment highrise next to the Radisson Hotel. DC was on the top ibeam south corner of OCSR at this point in time.

Unfortunately the circumstances and the quickness of the whole incident kept me from getting any pics so we will never know who the third pefa was. My theory of what took place is that Orion was the 3rd falcon and Beauty was trying to give him food. DC tried nabbing it(he often took food from Orion) so Beauty dive-bombed him to shoo him away. I can’t explain why we never saw Orion again as I would think he would have stuck around for a bit.

Larry and I were getting questioned a lot by passersby this morning making it that much harder to keep track of things. At about 8:30am Beauty and DC went to the nest box and renewed their bond by bowing and echupping. They both managed to leave the nest box without Larry or I seeing them and about 15 minutes later Jeanne came to join us. Larry was ready to leave so he waited for her so she could take his parking spot as the bridge was all full up from the Women of Faith event at the Blue Cross Arena. When she arrived he asked if she wanted him to parallel park and she said no. So I was directing her into the spot but she couldn’t quite do it so I parked for her and we had a laugh over it.

Jeanne and I had no falcons so we shifted our attention to the river below where Jeanne spotted an adult Black-crowned Night Heron.

Dana and Carol were watching Beauty on the Frontier Communications tower until she flew to OCSR and landed on the 2nd ibeam south side.

I had to be going and Jeanne was ready too so we left downtown in good hands with Dana and CarolP. I saw 3 falcons this morning which is enough to make anybody that loves them SMILE! 🙂

Check out my pics and videos by clicking on the links below

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWrIng

http://youtu.be/pzU2H3_Zbsk
http://youtu.be/ep6QwyZNf-0
http://youtu.be/k7eB4WKQQgc
http://youtu.be/6fn0R5u7wcg
http://youtu.be/LqiWcDewY3Y

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2012 at 3:41 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.