Pretty straight-forward watch for Cleo, the Catahoula Leopard – my owner, and me. It was a grey, cloudy, cool day.
In no particular order, we saw the following:
– Archer stripping prey on the 3-rd from the top I-beam on the Main St side.
– Both falcons going over to the Mercury statue.
– Beauty on the Wilder Bldg fire escape.
– Some flying around the buildings.
– Beauty kakking at Archer as he field-stripped the meal.
I did not see the food transfer because of intervening buildings (assuming there was a transfer), but did see a Pefa take the prey to the box around 10:00 am.
It started to rain and the clouds came down ever lower such that I could not even see the top of First Federal, so we headed on home.
Larry O

From Rochester Falcon Watcher, Lou C.

Dana and I were asked to take banding day photos from on top of the First Federal building yesterday. Although the building is a bit too far away from a photographic standpoint (sort of like taking someone’s portrait from the other end of a football field), I couldn’t say ‘no’ to the opportunity because it afforded a unique view, looking downward into the falcon nestbox area, and would allow for some shots that offered a falcon’s view of the world. Cool! We got up there around 9:15 am. The wind was blowing and there was a large loud exhaust fan near the corner of the building where we had to shoot from so we had to scream at each other, but it still was a very enjoyable experience. We were joined by D&C staff photographer, Maria de Jesus. You may have already seen her pictures posted in the D&C, one of which included Dana. In addition there was a person from Channel 10 up on the roof with us.

One photographic challenge was to get my camera to focus on the flying falcons and not any of the objects behind them because we were shooting downward. I threw my camera into manual focus mode and used that for some of these shots. In other instances, I left the zoom pulled back to show a wider view. In addition, we only had one fly-by and when the falcon did come close, the camera wasn’t set to compensate for a strong backlight. I needed to do some Photoshopping to correct. I took advantage of the opportunity of being on top of the building by also taking some wide angle pictures of the surrounding area, looking north, south east, and west to view the city.

All in all, it turned out to be a beautiful day, especially since we topped off the experience with a trip to the Dinosaur Barbeque for lunch.

Attached is an album of pictures with this external view. It’s a day late, but better late than never! Click on my picture to view the album. Enjoy!

Lou

From Rochester Falcon Watcher, Carol P.

I headed downtown around 9 am.  Since Archer and Beauty are incubating the eggs, there hasn’t been too much activity.  That will all change when the first eyas hatches.

Today I met Dana and Larry O (with Cleo) on the Broad St. Bridge.  Just before Larry arrived, Dana and I saw Beauty fly off of the Mercury statue down to the river on the south side of the bridge.  We crossed over to that side and were excited to see Beauty down below in the shallow water of the Genesee River. 

It was a warm, cloudy day and Beauty took advantage of the cool water, drinking and bathing for about 10 minutes.  She then took off and flew through a group of about 7 Ring-billed Gulls that weren’t very happy at the intrusion.  Beauty ended up landing on the base of the Mercury statue, where she started to preen and dry off.

I’ll let Dana post her pictures, since she has a really great camera, but I was lucky to get some video to share with everyone.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-hjFshZtck

Took lunch on Broad St. Parked in the middle of the bridge.
Quickly sighted Beauty on OCSR.
Around 12:18, Beauty pretty directly flew to the nestbox. It is interesting to note that her approaches tend to involve fairly angled up-lifts. From OCSR, she disappeared behind Reuters Publishing, but when I next saw her, she was centered up on Times Square at about the 8th floor, and to my way of thinking pretty close to the face of the building. That was when she swooped up his angle and landed right at the nextbox.
In she went and out came Archer.
He headed out behind Reuters, and when I did not see him land on OCSR or Mercury, I changed position to check the Wilder Bldg, which is where I found him on the copper ledge. He preened a bit, and then headed over to the base of Mercury, disappearing from view again.
I watched for a stoop over the parking lot for a bit, but it was time to head back to the office. Getting back to my car, I was able to see Archer still on Mercury.
Next thing he was off and headed towards me. He flew overhead and out over the river, circling by the library twice. I did not see what had him so interested, but he was not more than 20 or 30 feet above street level.
He came back over Broad St, circled and headed up Broad, past South Ave and over the ramp garage. Again I lost sight, but I stayed put.
Within 10 minutes, I had him coming back up Broad St. As he flew overhead I could see that he had completed a hunt. I don’t know what he caught (but it wasn’t anything big like a Condor or flamingo or elephant).
Archerwent to the south-east wing on TS and started cleaning. It was time for me to go.
Nice watch on a cold, and somewhat cloudy day.

On what turned out to be a beautiful day, Cleo the Catahoula Leopard falcon-watcher-in-training and I headed to the Broad St bridge. Getting there, I found Lou, Dana and Carol P actively engaged in the pleasure of falcon watching.

It was a pretty good watch. We had Archer in 2 stoops from the OCSR. The first one took Archer way out over the river, headed south – way beyond Court St. We got a look at the target and it appeared to be a hawk, but as I said it was pretty far out. Archer cranked the wings all the way until he got close when he went into a 45 degree descent after the hawk.

We lost sight of him, but he showed up again.

Later on while we were in the Thompson parking lot, Archer did a vertical stoop from OCSR down the southeast face. Unfortunately the buildings got in the way and we lost sight of him about half-way down. It was a glorious stoop, and something I had not seen since the Kodak days. He went right down the face of the building. It is always amazing to me how they can pull out before hitting the ground.

We had one other burst of activity. Archer was flying around the parking lot going behind buildings and appearing again over our heads. Best guess is that he was spending time and gaining altitude to get back to OCSR.

Pretty good day for falcon-watching.

by Lou

We had a beautiful day for a Falcon Watch today. Quite a few people showed up to enjoy the nice weather and sunshine. Watchers included Dana, Carol P, Kathy O, Joyce, Brian, Dawn, Larry O, Jeanne, new watchers Dave and Diane, and myself.

As far as falcon watch activitiy, there really wasn’t that much happening in the morning (Dana and I got there around 9:00 am) – we had one spotted on top of Times Square that pretty much stayed there most of the morning. The Rochester city crew was out on the Main Street bridge removing the log-jam of trees and debris in the Genesee River at the bridge, providing us with some non-falcon related entertainment. I have some pics in the attached album showing how they used a large crane to pull trees up onto the bridge where they sawed them into smaller sizes and loaded them into trucks for removal. Some of the trees they pulled out of the river were 80’ monsters. They only did about a third of the logjam so my guess is that they’ll be out again tomorrow morning, weather dependent.

As more people showed up, we had one falcon fly near Xerox before it returned to Times Square. We also had a Kestrel visitor that Archer chased. The Kestrel landed on a fire escape across from the nestbox and we think it may have escaped into the building through an open window after Archer flew down to him. Eventually, Archer gave up and flew back up to Times Square.

We left in the afternoon with Archer on top of Times Square near the wings and Beauty on the ledge of the nestbox.

Click on the picture in this report to check out the pics. (Log-in required)

Lou

By Lou

Dana, Carol P and myself spent the morning out on the Broad Street Bridge watching Beauty and Archer. We had a few interesting observations, including seeing A & B copulate on Mercury’s moneybag and seeing Archer catch a Woodpecker. We saw a couple of other falcons too, including a Kestrel and a juvenile Peregrine. Non-falcon sightings include a drake Merganser, the discovery of a secret Pigeon hide-out, and an evil Green-Garbed Gnome peering out of the Reuters building, giving Carol the heebie jeebies.

To me, the highlight was seeing Archer catch the Woodpecker. It was the first time I’ve seen a falcon actually catch a bird like that and Archer made it look effortless. He easily snatched the bird out of the air near the Convention Center after chasing it horizontally across the river. I have some pictures in the attached album (click on the pic)… it looks to be a Yellow Bellied Sapsucker that he caught.

– Lou

by Larry O’Heron
7:00 Cleo (my new Catahoula Leopard dog) and I arrived at the Broad St bridge with coffee, doughnut and binoculars in hand. Following the rules of being a good alpha, Cleo did not get access to the coffee or doughnut, but I gave her unlimited viewing thru the binoculars. We quickly spied Beauty on Mercury but no sign of Archer.

7:10 While walking up Court St towards the Civic Center, and having just stepped off the bridge, I saw Archer flying in from the west over the Civic Center Plaza. As he crossed over Exchange St, he went over the War Memorial and I lost sight of him. Cleo and I scooted back to the Court St bridge but did not see him. Beauty however was still on Mercury. So we headed up the War Memorial parkway to Broad St to return to our starting observation point.

7:20 On the Broad St bridge and looking for Archer, I caught him again coming up Broad St towards Xerox. He passed over head e-chupping. Meanwhile, Beauty flew from Mercury to the scrape. Once again Archer went behind buildings and I lost sight of him.

7:30 Continuing to look, I saw Archer kiting on the wind over Lincoln First. He stayed there several minutes and then began a drift over to Xerox. Somewhere between Xerox and B&L, he kited again. Keeping an eye on him, as I was sure that he was hunting, he started his run. He began with about a 20 degree descent towards Main St with his wings still out. He continued the pace until he pulled his wings in which is when he stooped in earnest. He rocket-speed drop took him behind the Hyatt. He must have increased his angle of attack because I did not see him come out the other side, and I should have.

7:40 Archer showed up at the scrape where he landed just under the southeast wing. He stayed a minute and then took off. Now I clearly saw him with a package. He headed over to the elevator shaft where he flew in, cached the package and came back out, flying around to the other side.

7:50 Cleo and I drove over to Andrews St and quickly located Archer on the top i-beam. We left him there to return home for some breakfast.

By Larry O’Heron
Pulled up on the Broad St bridge with another 6″ meatball sub, but today in tie and nice clothes. I need to eat something that is less messy.
Anyway, Beauty was at the box with Archer nowhere to be seen. Eventually Beauty flew low over Exchange towards the Wilder Bldg. I lost sight of her, and did not see her reappear.
However Archer (several minutes) later came out from that direction and went to OCSR.
It was after that when Beauty soared high overhead, slowly drifting and meandering off to the northwest. Watching her, I did not see Archer take off.
Jim P showed up and we chatted for awhile on a very nice day, standing over the turbulent spring waters of the Genesee River. Soon enough it was time to return to work.

Stopped by the Broad St bridge with a Subway’s meatball sandwich and caught sight of Dan S, sitting in a chair on the bridge, and apparently not up to a whole lot. He directed me to a parking spot (charging $5.00 in the process) and briefed me on the location of falcons. One on Ocsr and the other unlocated, whereupon I spied it on Mercury. Dan S cursed and grumbled about how sneaky peregrines are and we settled into a very, bery blustery watch.
The highlight came when a crow flew between them and the scrape. First Archer (from OCSR) and then Beauty (from Mercury) took off to bedevil the poor corvid, but it was short-lived as the crow kept moving out of the area of the scrape.  … by Larry O’Heron