By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Arriving downtown at 6:34am I went to the Broad St. Bridge(BSB) to take a look around and found no falcons anywhere in that area or did I see any bumps on the Frontier Communications tower or jail tower. I continued on down Broad St. to the east side and found nothing over there either. Hmm, where could Beauty be hiding this morning? I made my way back to BSB just in time to say hi and bye to LarryO who wasn’t any more successful than I was in finding a falcon. A man over by the back of the Blue Cross Arena was throwing bread to the gulls in a feeding frenzy of sorts. I taped that for you to see. I stood on the bridge looking around until nearly 8:00am when I got a text message from DebbieH stating that she thought there was a pefa on the north side of OCSR. I thanked her and mosied over to Main St. and took the stairs down to the riverside walkway by the OCSR building. I spoke of this recently explaining that it runs on both sides of the Genesee River from Andrews St. to Main St. and there is a pedestrian bridge that crosses the river from the Radisson Hotel to the OCSR building. I took  video to show the area. I did find Beauty on the top ibeam north corner.

When I first got there it looked like she was eating something but I soon was able to see that she was just preening. That was the theme this morning-preening and napping,napping and preening and occasionally looking at the many,many pigeons that hang out in this part of the city. They were all over the walkway and lined up on the Radisson Hotel lower roof. I thought for sure Beauty would stoop on one at some point but not a chance- she was hunkered down for the duration of my watch. Even after pooping she didn’t budge! lol

Remember to click on pics for full version

A nice man named Gustov who rides a bike and wears spandex very well that I met early in the summer stopped by to ask if I was seeing any falcons. I pointed out Beauty to him and handed him my binocs as a couple people stopped to ask what I was taking pictures of. Well I didn’t even have to answer for Gustov told them that I was a falcon expert and that I have been watching them a long time, then he showed them Beauty. The day I met Gustov he was so thrilled to hear the soap opera story of this past year that he stayed with me about an hour that first day. It was good to see him again. I went up on the pedestrian bridge to get the sun from distorting my pics of the Beautyful one as she looked so white with the suns rays on her you would never have believed it was her.

I had quite the mix of homeless people and tourists coming thru on this bridge as I set up right in the middle part of it. A friend of mines sister came by and chatted for a bit as well as a Japanese tourist with a nice Nikon camera. He didn’t understand english  so I showed him Beauty on my cameras LCD screen so he would know where to look. He nodded thank you and took a few pics before leaving. Next I witnessed another gull feeding frenzy as some people were throwing bread into the river. A homeless lady that had tried scamming me once before over by the Radisson Hotel came by asking what I was looking at and proceeded to tell me how they had bed bugs in the hotel and that they spread to the park by the library and infested the furniture in the library. Note that this is hear say and I have no proof of there being bed bugs in the Radisson Hotel. She continued to say that instead of treating the  mattresses they just threw them outside in the freezing cold to kill the bed bugs. Boy you sure do meet all kinds in the city! lol

Beauty seemed to be settled in for a while so I ended my watch around 10:30am and headed back to Main St. to catch a bus home. I must say this mornings watch was quite a change from the usual and the peeps I conversed with surely kept me smiling! 🙂

A special thank you to Patsy for the bus pass she gave me this morning. She said it was for my devotion to the birds-Hey I do it for my love for the birds and for the peeps at home who watch vicariously through my reports,pics and videos. Speaking of which-click on the links below for my pics and videos of the day

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWrI2g

http://youtu.be/9uG5FXs-new
http://youtu.be/qTJ5UBDcvrE
http://youtu.be/jvKARpJfw2w
http://youtu.be/TenK–l8zKQ
http://youtu.be/FlMqVFt9Kdc
http://youtu.be/_z7hf7FDzPA

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2012 at 4:00 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.