By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Upon my arrival downtown this morning it was still dark out on the Broad Street Bridge(BSB). As has been my routine for the last week or so I walked to the east side to check HSBC for Beauty. After checking from Clinton and Broad St, and not seeing her I went down Clinton to Court St. across from Bausch&Lomb at Washington Square Park where I found the Beautyful one. She was up on Xerox perched on her night time roosting spot 5th column on the south side.Woohoo this is the first time I’ve seen Beauty on this spot since she came back from rehab!

I sat on a bench with my camera pointed at her,finger on the shutter for almost an hour when a woman came by and asked me about the bus stop. As I got back in position Beauty took off while the camera was trying to focus. UGH! I missed the take off shot! She flew right over to HSBC and landed on the southeast corner so I walked down Court St. crossing Chestnut St. While I was under some trees she took off behind HSBC and came back to the same spot with food. It didn’t look very big so I don’t know if she grabbed a small bird or cached food from the back of HSBC.

I stopped by Manhattan Square Park where I was right below Beauty and leaned up against a light pole to steady my camera and started clicking away.

The area is under construction for a new traffic circle and to make this end of Broad and Court streets 2-way traffic instead of the one way it has been forever. A man was moving cones near by and asked if I was making a time lapse of the place and I chuckled before telling him all about our beloved falcons. He thought it was very cool especially when I pointed out Beauty way up above us and showed him a pic of her eating on my cameras LCD screen. He then said thanks for sharing your story and carried on with his work sporting a big old smile on his face! I got back to leaning on my light pole just in time to watch Beauty fly off to the west thus missing another take off shot. Oh well, educating people about the fastest animal on the planet is much more important than getting a most likely blurry take off pic!

I had gotten a tweet that Dana and Dan were on the BSB so I tweeted as fast as I could so they might be able to see Beauty as she flew thru.  I then started to make my way back to the BSB hoping Dan was still there as he was on vacation the past week and I missed seeing him in the morning. As I approached the bridge I could see both Dan and Dana sitting in their chairs. Dana informed that they did see Beauty fly thru in the direction of the Frontier Communications Tower(FCT). Dan left a few minutes later so Dana and I hopped in her SUV and went in search of falcons. We went all over the city to no avail even checking the Kodak Hawkeye plant at Driving Park and St. Paul Blvd. The school nearby where a nest box used to be on the roof was no more and there was a for lease sign on the building. We stopped by high falls to check from the Pont De Rennes pedestrian bridge as well and saw a couple Kestrels flying with each other to the north.

Another check downtown before we went to the Brighton site(BS) to look for Miss Pigott turned up no sightings and the road around the building was still closed for paving purposes. There were some pretty big potholes that are now gone which is good news for our local watchers with cars. Dana and I left BS to check downtown one more time and found Jeanne on the BSB but no pefas. We all drove over to FCT for one more look see and found Beauty on the east side under the platform with her back to us.

It was time to go home for Dana and I but we left having seen the Beautyful one and Jeanne who always makes me smile! 🙂

The links below need only be clicked to view pics and videos from my watch

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWrIvA

http://youtu.be/hW6z5XH6Gq0

http://youtu.be/lGV-4Csc74w
http://youtu.be/Rb-8aDHjJgM

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2012 at 5:45 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.