By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Earlier today, I saw KPF(alcon) flying towards the stacks at KP at a high rate of speed.  Could not tell if she was hunting or not.  Good to see her.

After work, I first checked the KP area.  Nothing.

Next stop downtown, where I found Beauty and Dot.ca on the top IBeam of OCSR, south side.  I stayed and watched them for awhile from the Broad St. Bridge.  I was joined by Aaron, our photographer/watcher friend for a short while.  He was there to get some pictures of the ducks in the river.  After he left, I decided to head over to the BS location to see if I could find Pigott.

At the BS location it took me awhile, but after a couple loops around the building I found a falcon on the east side on the tree ledge. at approximately 5:40 pm.  At first I thought this must be Pigott, but this bird seemed to have different markings and was whiter.

Joyce texted that from the live streaming video, it looked like Dot.ca took off heading SE from the OCSR downtown.  A couple moments later, Dot.ca flew in, sort of buzzed the large female, who by the way had a very large crop, and landed on the back of the building.  Well, that was a little strange.  At first I thought he might have been trying to mate with her.

Kathy O joined me and we settled in to Watch.  Kathy pointed out that Dot.ca was gone, but he soon returned with a Kestrel (we believe) hot on his tail.  They flew around to the front of the building and back.  Dot.ca landed on the same place he had just vacated.  The Kestrel took one last dive on him and then flew off to the south.  The female Pefa never moved or made a sound during this.

At 6:10 pm, Dot.ca took off again, this time heading towards the female’s position.  He looked like he was either going to land on her or the top of the building above her.  He did neither.  DC again swooped on her and this time she took off.   He chased her to the front of the building.  They soon came back and he was diving on her, causing her to defend herself.  This time she did vocalize with a kind “yelp”.  New sound to both Kathy and I.  He was very aggressively trying to get her to leave.  She was reluctant, and she was much larger than DC.  Finally he “convinced” her it was better that she go.  He chased her off to the SE, until we lost sight of them.  This was so reminiscent of how he treated Beauty after he lost Unity.  I knew that Beauty was safely downtown during all of this on the OCSR.

Dot.ca soon returned and landed on the same east tree ledge the female had been on.  He stayed on guard there til around 6:45 pm when he took off heading north towards downtown.

So, another interesting Watch from the BS location. Due to behavior, I do not believe this was Pigott, and the coloring and markings were wrong.  Dot.ca was definitely aggressive against this other falcon.

There was no kakking, whining or ee-chupping by either falcon.  Just that strange vocalization made by the female when under attack.

We’ll definitely keep Watching and letting you know what we see.  There is always something new to learn!  Although I do wish things would be more calm.

I’ll leave you with a picture of the now totally wrapped High Falls Stack.

REMEMBER TO CLICK ON ANY PICTURE TO SEE THE FULL VERSION.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2012 at 11:51 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.