By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

This mornings starting temperature was 43 (F)  6 (C) with sunshine,blue skies and a stiff north wind that made it quite brisk.

I was all ready to leave for my watch when I checked the live stream of the nest box as I always do. Beauty left her baby and flew off and Dot.Ca (DC) arrived and just stood there staring at his eyas. He eventually went in and stood over it and it seemed like he was just about to try and lay down when Beauty returned with food. She fed their young one its first meal as DC watched (me too). I left for my watch right after with a smile to start the day. When I arrived downtown just about 5:30am I could see DC on the Mercury money bag (MMB) so I drove straight down to the hole.

10 minutes later DC stooped on a starling unsuccessfully and landed on the fire escape opposite the starling. The starling was chirping up a storm at DC as they had a stare down. The starling stood its ground as DC waited for it to fly off so he could snag it. DC gave up and flew back to the MMB as the starling immediately flew up to its nest in a hole on the Wilder building. The entire scene lasted less than a minute so I never got any pics.

Approximately 6:10am DC flew off to the southwest over the Blue Cross Arena and then turned southeast flying out of my field of vision from down in the hole. He didn’t return so I drove up to the Broad St. Bridge to have a look around.

Please click on my pics to see the full version

I found Dan on the BSB sitting in his chair so I pulled up behind his car. He told me Beauty had flown to the east side around 5am and came back with a small package and took it to the nest box(babies first meal). He asked me if I saw the crow chase and I told him I had been down in the hole and missed it. He then explained that DC had chased after 3 crows and actually grabbed one of them briefly before letting it go on its merry way. I said wow and told him I had an even bigger wow to tell him-we had a hatch! He was tickled pink as I watched his eyes light up and that wonderful great big smile of his appear on his face! We chit chatted a bit as I caught him up on other news and then at 6:30am he decided to leave as he was very cold and it looked like DC had gone to the Brighton location (BS) because Dan said he watched DC after the crow chase fly to the tree line in the southern sky. I set out for BS at this time but nobody was home there so I returned to downtown finding DC on the top ibeam south corner of OCSR.

DC flew east across the river then back and over to the deck around 7:30am then shot back off seconds later and flew back to the OCSR south corner once more.

As I watched DC Annette tweeted that Beauty had left the nest box and returned unbeknownst to me and then Donna reported hearing another egg peeping.  Oh yeahhh!  I drove over to the Radisson Hotel near Main St. to observe DC where I had a better angle on him. Just before the 8 o’clock hour he stooped over the Wilder building and didn’t resurface so I drove back to the hole to find him 3 stories down on the fire escape railing.

DC was after the starlings again turning his head to and fro to see one pop out the hole in the wall above him so he could grab it!

DC played this game for only 10 minutes and then he flew back to OCSR with nothing to show for his efforts.

Back to the Radisson I went and after 15 minutes DC flew west and returned with food.

I wasn’t sure at first if it was a fresh catch or cached food but after looking at my pics on my cameras LCD screen I could clearly see that it was a left over wing.

DC was on the east side of the south corner top ibeam as he plucked a few feathers and picked at the meat some but wasn’t really into it. He flew off after only a few minutes and landed further down to the east on the ibeam. It is there that I left him as I ended my watch at 8:45am. Let me just say that  there’s no better way for this watcher to start her day than to watch a newborn chick get fed its very first meal and I can think of no better reason to smile! 🙂

Check out the links below for videos from my watch

http://youtu.be/I9tWOFQodGg
http://youtu.be/wGioAwarQCE
http://youtu.be/GB97wRTdeaA

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 25th, 2013 at 12:29 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.