By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was 41 degrees (F) 5 (C) when I left for my watch today with a bit of a breeze.

Beauty was on the eggs when I checked the cams but while enroute to downtown Dot.Ca (DC) came and switched with her. When I arrived on the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) Dan was there and I asked if he had any action-he said no.  Thanks to Annette for tweeting that a switch was made and thanks to Donna for giving the time of the switch at 5:54am. Beauty was nowhere that we could see her.

Just before 6:30am I spotted both Beauty and DC flying from the east over the river with both landing on the top ibeam southeast side of OCSR. Soon after, Beauty flew to the Mercury money bag and took off quickly from there too. DC appeared to be eating on OCSR and as I was looking for Beauty he flew off. Donna said that Beauty was in the nest box as I had seen a falcon fly to it but wasn’t sure who. Dan and I were getting frustrated because we couldn’t keep up with the brief landing these 2 were doing and of course the buildings being in the way is always an issue. I couldn’t even get any pictures of them!! Dan left about 6:50am and I went to the hole to have a look around. I watched Beauty fly to the northwest wing and check the back of the ledge presumably for cached food. She was gone seconds later and went to the nest box as Donna once again let me know who was up there on the eggs. Thank you so much!

I checked from the Andrews St. Bridge (ASB) but didn’t see DC anywhere so I left for the Brighton Site (BS) I arrived there around 7:30am finding Pigott on the southwest corner of the west extension eating.

DC  was on the southwest corner of the southwest extension.

Things stayed this way for 10 minutes. I decided to tape Pigott after she finished eating and pan over to DC on his corner but when I did he was gone. He was on his way over to Pigott to mate with her which I could hear while I was trying to find them on my cameras LCD screen. The end of the video is a blurry image of them before DC left. He then went to the southeast corner of the roof above the south side vent.

He didn’t stay there for long taking wing to go to the southwest corner on the southeast extension.

Click my pics for full version

Again he stayed briefly and then he was off flying north. Pigott had been on her west extension corner the whole time. I just knew DC was going back downtown so I said goodbye to Pigott and left. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way there when Donna let me know DC was on the eggs and Beauty on Mercury. He’s a fast little flyer he is!! I didn’t see the Beautyful one on Mercury from the BSB  so I went on a search and find ride ending  on the ASB where I didn’t notice Beauty on the base of Mercury until the 3rd look with my binocs. She blended in well and the distance didn’t help any either.

I drove to the hole which was close to her but the sun was in a bad place for picture taking.

I then went up to the BSB where I could just barely see the top half of her peeking at me.

Beauty flew to the west behind Thomson Reuters and returned to the base of Mercury some 20 minutes later landing just before 9am.

Her crop seemed to have a little bulk to it telling me she had eaten at some point. I saw Pigott and DC eat earlier so I ended my watch at 9:13am content that all was well with our resident Rochester Peregrine Falcons. Shortly after I got home from my watch Beauty laid her 4th egg at 9:37am which made me forgot the frustrations of the day thus  planting a very big smile on old MAKs face! 🙂

I have links below for some videos-just click them to view

http://youtu.be/bK3FQxhkM7M
http://youtu.be/fkrpvGLrpUI
http://youtu.be/RPHukHxEC3Y
http://youtu.be/Aae9iNZUgg0

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013 at 2:00 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.