Falcon Sighting – Southend of Kodak Park – Sunday, June 13, 2010 – Falcon Watcher: Carol P.

After a busy weekend of Falcon Watching at the Times Square bldg, it was time to head home around 3:00 pm.

I was on Lake Ave heading north.  Just after crossing Rte 104, I looked over at the southend of KP.  There was a familiar shape on top of one of the buildings.  Could it be?

I quickly found a place to park and clicked a few pictures before grabbing my binoculars.  Hmmm, it looked suspiciously like a Falcon.  So, far away, darn.  All I could hope for was a 1/2 way decent picture, so I clicked away.

The Falcon took off and zipped around the buildings, scaring up pigeons as it passed, finally landing again, even further away. Drats!

I made an attempt to get closer, but by the time I parked my car, the Falcon was gone.  After an hour of looking around the area, I gave up and headed home.

Here are a couple of pictures I was able to get, zoomed in and lightened.  I’m pretty sure it was a Peregrine Falcon and based on size, a female.

Last fall we saw Mariah and at least two other Peregrines hanging out in the Kodak Park area, including a juvenile.  So was this Mariah?  There is no way of knowing.  But, you can bet the Watchers will be keeping an eye on the area and we’ll report any further sightings. 

http://picasaweb.google.com/libbymybird/PeregrineAtKodakPark61310?feat=directlink

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

Lots of pictures and a couple of video clips from today’s banding of Callidora and Jemison:

http://birdblog.marchlords.com/2010/06/new-bangles-for-calli-jemma.html

Jim