By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was a warm overcast morning with a starting temperature of 58 (F) 14 (C) and rain was on the way.

I arrived downtown at 5:18am and drove to the hole (Aqueduct St.) as is my usual routine of late. Dot.Ca (DC) was nowhere in the vicinity so I drove to the Brighton location(BS) determined to see Pigott. I arrived about 5:30am and as I rounded the west side of the building I heard the sweet sound of Miss Pigott whining. I looked up and saw a bump on the southwest corner of the southwest extension.

DC

I couldn’t see the beak opening on this falcon when I heard whining so I immediately started looking around for another bird. Sure enough there was one on a west side window ledge 2 down in the corner where it meets the west extension and that beak was moving.

After 7 days of not seeing her I was finally laying my eyes on the wanderer Pigott! And an added bonus was that DC was there too,meaning it just may be that he roosts there at night. It doesn’t prove it but it’s definitely looking that way. Not exactly a good thing considering he has a family to protect downtown and can’t do that if he’s at BS.  I backed the car up to where I had a better look at Pigott and when I checked the southwest corner again DC was gone. Miss Pigott would continue to whine on and off quite loudly for at least an hour after he was gone and then she settled down to do some preening.

Just before 6:30am it started to rain lightly and then a thunderstorm rolled thru startling Pigott when the thunder rumbled from the sky! Around 7am I received reports from cam watchers Donna and Annette that Beauty was feeding her 3 little white fuzz balls after a tug of war ensued with dad over the food. Also Campgee had tweeted right after I arrived at BS that Beauty had left the nest box and returned. Thanks ladies! Pretty cool to be in Brighton and have  peeps from New Jersey,Germany and Canada letting me know what’s going on at the nest box 2.5 miles away. Anyway, after a while Miss Pigott moved to her right (south) and cinched herself in tight up against a column to better protect against the rain.

Click on pics for full version

Now my plan had been to stay until Pigott left for the day so I could at least see what direction she went and possibly follow her but the rain put a damper on that idea. It was obvious she wasn’t going anywhere as she was showing her back and not really moving much. She did have a bit of a bulge in her crop so she didn’t even have to fly off to hunt. I left Pigott at 8:20am to check out the action downtown before heading home. I stopped on Exchange Blvd. near Fitzhugh St. in the Cornhill district as I usually do when returning from BS to scope out the scene from the south.

Click it for full view

I didn’t see DC on the top ibeam near the south corner of OCSR until I got to Broad St. They are sheltered pretty good on the ibeams from inclement weather.

My pics started and ended with DC but clearly this 3 hour watch was all about Pigott and for the first time since May 29th I could report that I saw all 3 resident Rochester Peregrine Falcons! Smiling?-you bet! 🙂

There are links to 4 videos below-all Pigott. Just click and view

http://youtu.be/MWOyu6liexM
http://youtu.be/o-6wA3TuXdo
http://youtu.be/nw6rIdwtkro
http://youtu.be/vnnkZrIcZ3s

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 6th, 2013 at 2:29 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.