By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The outside temperature when I left the house this morning was 41 degrees fahrenheit. I wore a sweater under my lightweight winter coat with gloves and I was quite toasty-as a matter of fact as I found out later a little too toasty! As I arrived on the Broad St. Bridge (BSB)there were no pefas to be found in that area so I walked over to the east side. Nothing on Bausch&Lomb,HSBC or Xerox that I could see and I walked around the perimeter of each building. I was starting to sweat  so I stopped between B&L and the Central library for a few minutes before moving on toward the BSB.

Suddenly LarryO was tweeting in rapid fire mode about falcons over Xerox and falcons stooping in the river then back by Xerox then a stoop near Washington Square park which I was very close to. Slow down already I said to myself -everytime a tweet came thru I started walking to that location. I did see a falcon above Xerox just hovering and because I was amongst all the tall buildings I lost it and then it re-appeared flying above me and  hanging a right at Broad St. flying due east behind B&L where I lost it again. At the time it looked like a small pefa as I didn’t know how many falcons Larry was reporting about I thought Dot.Ca cuz it was definitely wearing adult plumage. I decided I had to join Larry on BSB to get out from my limited view around all the tall buildings and as I started down Broad St. Larry tweeted falcon at the nest box so I stopped by Tim Hortons to have a look with my binocs. I didn’t even have time to grab them when another tweet came in that the pefa was gone and that Larry thought it was Beauty.

Well, I crossed South Ave. and stopped when the Frontier Communications Tower(FCT) comes into view and spotted a falcon on the platform railing northeast corner. I took a pic to see if I could ID it and saw that it was dark in front so I figured it was Beauty.

Larry walked down to meet me and discuss the events that had taken place. I asked if he had 2 falcons and he said no just one so then I was sure it was the Beautyful one. He had to get to work and I decided since she was so active that I would wait and see if she would leave the FCT before walking all the way over there for nothing. I started that way and got a text from Donna that Beauty had left so I returned to the BSB to have a look around. I did see a large falcon hovering above Xerox before it disappeared.

5 minutes later I found Beauty on her west corner top ibeam spot on OCSR. DebbieH stopped by on the way to work and after she left I looked over at OCSR and couldn’t see Beauty anymore. I didn’t know if she left or just went around the corner where I couldn’t see her. I made the decision to go up on the South Ave. garage to have a look see before heading over to check the north side of OCSR. Having found nothing from atop the garage I left there and walked down South Ave to Main St. to the Radisson Hotel where I saw a bump on the northeast side of the west corner of OCSR. I crossed the pedestrian bridge and set up behind the Rochester Plaza Hotel which is kiddie corner to OCSR and where Jemison was found and captured by animal control when he injured himself in 2010. It was my first close encounter with a falcon of which I will never forget.

I stayed on the riverside walkway for a little over an hour watching Beauty preen and sleep. It didn’t seem like she was going to leave any time soon so I called it a watch and left her to rest with her head tucked back in to her wing.

I missed most of the action this morning but I was content just to share space with our Beautyful downtown matriarch. This my friends ALWAYS puts a smile on this watchers face! 🙂

Click on the links below for some videos of Beauty just hanging out on OCSR this morning

http://youtu.be/Hjg-LwHN9kk
http://youtu.be/VMl5Zbu4ipI
http://youtu.be/yH3LGzqZJrQ

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2012 at 2:02 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.