Quest continues to enjoy her time inland. As with the previous week, she has spent most of her days in Brampton, Ontario. She took one trip west into the Toronto suburbs, but it seems like she’s feeling comfortable staying away from the water for now.

If you’ve been keeping up with the Rochester Falconcam, you already know that Callidora and Jemison have been busy exercising their wings and running around outside the nest box. They haven’t taken flight yet, but at the rate they’re going, those first flights could happen at any time.

This year, even more than in the past, we’re going to need lots of eyes on these two falcons when they begin flying. We don’t have the luxury of big open spaces as we did at Kodak. In downtown Rochester there are plenty of buildings for the young falcons to land on, but those same buildings make it hard to keep the falcons in sight while they’re flying. The solution to that problem is to have plenty of people stationed near the Times Square building on street corners and bridges, so that we can keep them in view when they do decide to “take the plunge”.

The Genesee Valley Audubon Society held an orientation meeting for fledge watchers last week, but if you didn’t make it to that meeting, you can still join the fledge watch. We’ve posted complete details over at our FalconWatch blog, but to make it easy you can just CLICK HERE to get started.

Callidora and Jemison could really use your help, at least until they get used to their wings, and making decent landings. Those skills usually take one to two weeks to learn, but the organized Fledge Watch is scheduled for the next 3 weeks (it actually started last Monday, so we’re getting a late start!). So if you ever wanted to get out and see these marvels of nature in person, you couldn’t choose a better time than now. Come join the fun!

Zephyr makes a turn by the High Falls in this photograph captured by Jim Pisello on July 14. He tells us that on this morning all five of the fledglings were out in the gorge, but the “Z-man put on quite a show, grabbing at the tops of trees and harassing his sisters with games of talon tag.”

Carol Phillips sent this picture of Susan B, who cast a quizzical look at her admirers from the grassy edge of the gorge wall near the High Falls. Carol took this picture from the observation deck just to the east of the falls. It gives the watchers a great look at the fledglings as they fly along the river. And if they land on the edge of the gorge it’s a great spot to take pictures of the young falcons too!

-Jess

Joyce Miller sends this passing shot of Seneca that she took on the morning of July 19. She tells us…

“The skies were gray that morning and I thought… ‘Not a good day for picture-taking.’ Storms were threatening, and little did I know that Seneca would give me one of the clearest fly-by shots I’ve ever taken. She was having fun flying along the gorge wall and grabbing leaves off the tops of trees.”

What a stroke of good fortune for Joyce and for us that Seneca made such a great pass before the rain set in!

-Jess

First time falcon watcher Jill Church proves she’s no slouch behind the camera with this colorful shot of Quest flying in front of the High Falls, taken on July 5th. Jill says that Quest was flying around the gorge playing talon tag with one of her siblings. She noticed that, similar to Mariah, Quest has a split in her primary flight feathers, though on the opposite wing. As Jill says, “Like mother, like daughter – she’s a beauty!”

We agree 100% Jill!

Here’s Diamante, doing a little preening while sitting on a tree branch near the pedestrian bridge. Falcon watcher and Rochester Falconcam team member Jim Pisello got this shot while he was waiting to catch an action shot of Diamante taking off. Jim notes that he watched Diamante in the tree for almost half an hour. He never did get that takeoff shot, but he tells us that he thinks this is a more interesting photo because of Diamante’s odd pose.

-Jess

Fledge Watcher and Rochester Falconcam team member Carol Phillips kicks off our 2008 Gallery at Imprints with a terrific shot of Seneca adding some roughage to her diet after consuming a pigeon earlier this week. She wasn’t really going vegan on us– Peregrines are pretty strict carnivores– but it’s a fun image don’t you think?

The breakfast left-overs are visible in the lower right corner of the image– don’t look there if you’re squeamish!

-Jess

Once again we’d like to invite our local fledge watchers to submit pictures they’ve taken of Mariah, Kaver or this year’s great group of fledglings, to the 2008 Gallery at Imprints! Every few days we’ll host a new picture on the Rochester Falconcam’s home page, and we’ll provide details about the photo and the photographer here. And just like last year, we’ll feature the gallery images in the 2009 Rochester Falconcam Calendar.

To get started, just review our Submission Guidelines!

The Rochester Falconcam wants to thank the many talented photographers whose images help bring the wonder and excitement of the Rochester peregrines to our viewers around the world.

-Jess

It’s getting close to the time when we’ll launch the 2008 Rochester Falconcam! While we wait, we hope you’ll enjoy this slideshow of terrific photos taken by our fledge watchers and posted in our 2007 Gallery at Imprints.

Our friends at Kodak have introduced a new website that makes it easy to create dynamic slideshows like this one from any KodakGallery album (We created one from the Freedom 2005 album too). You can visit all of the Rochester Falconcam Slideshows, or try it out for yourself!