By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The starting temperature this morning was 36 (F) 2 (C)  with a busy wind and dark winter looking clouds making it a turn the furnace back on kind of day! Tomorrow promises to be colder with frost and freeze warnings overnite.

I was downtown at 5:28am this morning and still not early enough to see Dot.Ca (DC) arrive to relieve Beauty on the eggs. Annette reported that DC was on the eggs and it turns out the switch was made at around 5:15am. I went to the hole (Aqueduct St.)and found Beauty on the base of Mercury.

She would stand there looking around for 15 -20 minutes before revealing that she had prey under her at which point she started plucking feathers from a small food item.  Beauty spent 20 minutes preparing and eating and then she flew to the southeast wing with the leftovers stashing it at the back of the ledge.

Click on the pics to view the full version

I drove over to Broad St. by the Democrat & Chronicle for the best view and then back to the hole 5 minutes later when she flew to the OCSR landing on the top ibeam southeast side.

I decided I was going to the Brighton site early today to see if I could catch Pigott there since I hadn’t seen her since Thursday morning. It paid off for when I arrived at 6:40am Miss Pigott was on the south end of the southeast extension on a top window right below the roof top tree.

It was good to see this pretty Peregrine again as she watched birds below her in the trees. Just before 7am I noticed a crow come into view from the corner of my eye and go into a stoop. I never saw a crow stoop and thought it strange when suddenly Pigott was after it in her own stoop just missing it as it took cover in a tree. Good stuff! Miss Pigott proceeded to fly over to the east extension and come to rest on the southeast corner of it where she began to preen and rouse(shake feathers).

Around 7:15am I got a tweet from Campgee (thank you and thanks to Donna for letting me know who the tweet was from)that Beauty had taken over incubation duties and DC was on the loose. I thought I would stay put and see if he came for a visit. He never did while I was at the site but Pigott gave me plenty to look at as she turned her head every which way looking at whatever she was seeing in the trees and in the sky.

On 2 separate occasions Pigott  attempted to extract a pellet and was successful on one of those tries bringing up 2 pellets of which I got on video.

The clouds were rolling in and out the whole time I was there and at 8:15am or there abouts Pigott decided it was time to depart. She stretched out her wings and tail feathers and I watched her take off to the east without returning.

I left for downtown at 8:30am and drove around but didn’t spot a falcon anywhere. Donna let me know that Beauty was still on the eggs and that DC had left the OCSR at 7:55am. I ended my watch at 9:15am with a big old smile for having seen Pigott again! 🙂

Click on the links below to view more pics and videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqiB8

http://youtu.be/VcuQ3OtLB1g
http://youtu.be/mu5oCjV6IEA
http://youtu.be/AlWLOV_mOAw
http://youtu.be/CJWZoE2l7pc
http://youtu.be/eCF_kgm3oGM

This entry was posted on Monday, May 13th, 2013 at 4:45 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.