By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The heat and humidity is just plain oppressive this week here in Rochester,NY. It was 76 (F) 24 (C) when I started my watch at 5:30am.

As I came off the 490 ramp to Plymouth Ave. I could see an adult on the top arm of the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT), it was Beauty. I drove down to the city hall parking lot to check out the interior of the FCT and found 2 juvies on the platform. It looked like they were eating but I couldn’t say for sure. That platform serves as the dinner table for our young fledglings. Each year that she has had babies, Beauty has taken them over to the FCT for hunting training,feeding and roosting.

<check out the tail feathers hanging over the edge

The fledglings soon took off to the south toward Times Square (TSB) and as I was about to follow Dan came by. We set up our chairs in the Hochstein parking lot  but the juvies never came back and Beauty flew off to the Kodak Office (KO) launchpad so we opted to move to the Broad St. Bridge (BSB).

From there we could see Beauty on KO,a juvie on the base of Mercury and another one on the platform of FCT.

Next we spotted the 3rd juvie on the OCSR elevator shaft. It flew off and joined the one that was on the base of Mercury in a game of talon tag over the river. They finished and landed on the elevator shaft of OCSR with one of them taking off again to the west. Larry stopped by for a little while. Around 7am we saw a juvie flying across the river coming from the east side and Beauty was right behind it so we assumed there was a food exchange somewhere. Beauty went to the 2nd ibeam west corner of OCSR and the juvie continued west out of view. I left to see if I could find it and a few minutes later Dan and Larry ended their watch. i found a juvie on the Widows Walk (WW)east railing.

A robin was swooping on it and a little later when DebbieH stopped by she showed me where the Robins nest of 3 was located by her building. I found Dot.Ca on the OCSR top ibeam north corner and when I returned to WW there were 2 juvies there-1 on the west side rail (Rosetta) and 1 on the northwest corner (Voyager).

<Voyager <Rosetta Click my pics to see the full version

Both juvies took off around 8am and Debbie headed to work. I found Beauty on the jail tower and a juvie on the northeast corner of Crossroads. I then spotted a juvie on the northwest corner of Crossroads with food when the other one flew over there. They took off a few minutes later as the 3rd juvie joined them in flight as they played above the Crossroads building. 2 landed on the northeast corner then down to the lower roof on the northwest side. Baron and Voyager were the 2 up there at that time.

<Click it Baron Voyager

DC was gone from the OCSR and the 2 on Crossroads both disappeared onto the roof out of view. I left to check out the Brighton Site (BS). There were no PEFAs present but I did come across a Turkey Vulture on the east extension roof. It wasn’t there for long as it walked from the middle to the north end corner before flying off.

I returned to downtown finding 2 juvies chillin’ on the apparatus on the north side lower roof of the Crossroads building. Beauty was on the top ibeam west corner OCSR and DC on the top ibeam near the north side.

The heat was getting to me so I decided to end my watch at 10am. I’m sure all our Rochester Peregrine Falcons were down for the count as well. Tomorrow should be the last 90+ degree day as the weekend promises to be cooler with less humidity which will make this watcher smile! 🙂

Click on the links below to view more pics and videos from my watch

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqiVo

http://youtu.be/OluEGxGkRgM
http://youtu.be/Xs7QXnNXRiU
http://youtu.be/6ntwLVyfZEw
http://youtu.be/SZzxchdNbCk

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 18th, 2013 at 7:48 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.