By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Hang on to your hats-today was a very windy day with rain showers starting shortly after I arrived downtown. The temperature was 49 (F) 9 (C) and as I made my way home after finishing my watch I ran into a thunderstorm with some small but loud hail pounding down on the car.

Once more Dot.Ca (DC) made his way to the nest box to relieve Beauty of incubating duties before I left home. Campgee tweeted it out at 5:16am as I was putting on my jacket. Thank you for your efforts Camp! now all I had to do is find Beauty when I got downtown. I found her at 5:35am as I drove around the back(east side) of HSBC. I glanced up and caught a glimpse of her flying off the southeast corner heading east flapping her wings to beat the band. I pulled over and quickly lost her in the dark sky. 5-10  minutes later I found her on the southwest corner of HSBC and she was in hunt mode.

At 6am it started raining and Beauty flew off in the direction of the Broad St. Bridge (BSB). It took me 15 minutes to find her on the northwest side of the OCSR top ibeam. Our falcons get good protection from inclement weather on OCSR.

Her back was to me at first and just before she flew off 10 minutes later she turned around to show herself. I watched her as I made a u-turn on State St. so I could see her fly northwest past the Frontier Communications Tower and disappear. 25 minutes later after a couple trips around downtown, I found Beauty on the base of Mercury where she was eating.

The Beautyful one was having problems with feathers sticking to her beak but she managed to get her crop filled despite it.

Be sure to click on the pics for the full version

When she had her fill  Beauty turned around, situated the leftovers in her talon and flew off with it at 7:06am across the river to the Bausch & Lomb (B&L) building.

Beauty landed on a northwest corner and then out of the blue DC swooped in and tried to grab the food. He failed and landed on a ledge above her.

They both flew off with Beauty landing on another northwest corner above where she was and DC left the area momentarily.

Beauty left without me seeing as I was looking for DC, so I have no idea what happened to the leftovers. However, DC came flying in from the east and landed on the corner Beauty had just vacated. He appeared to be looking for the goods but didn’t find them as he was actually whining up there. Honestly, these 2 crack me up with their seemingly odd relationship.

Somewhere during this time frame Donna let me know that Beauty had gone to the nest box and was on the eggs. Thanks a lot, that was a big help as I was busy with Mr. food thief on the opposite side of the city. lol DC flew off at 7:30am and as he blended in with the building I lost track of him quickly.

I left for the Brighton Site but unfortunately Pigott was not at home when I got there. I drove around 3x and left after no sight or sound of her. I returned to downtown, parking on the BSB at 8:30am I found DC on the Mercury money bag and dozens of chimney swifts filling the airspace above us and both sides of the bridge. Swooping and darting over the river for a few minutes until the rain started coming down harder and then they vanished.

I left DC in the pouring rain as I could see lightening in the very dark western sky at 8:45am. I was smiling as I drove off, for I love thunderstorms almost as much as I love our Rochester Peregrine Falcons! 🙂

Click on the links below to view 4 videos from this mornings watch

http://youtu.be/8oQR9GEssGY
http://youtu.be/BDHk5p7I3aQ
http://youtu.be/mTk3aZJYZhE
http://youtu.be/wbx4eHMRApc

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 at 5:40 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.