By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was a very dark morning in the flower city with lots of humidity and rain showers. The temperature at the start of my watch was 64 (F) 18 (C).

I first checked the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT) and if there were any PEFAs in it I couldn’t see them as it was so dark out.  After checking from every side I drove north to Kodak Office (KO) where I found 2 fledglings as I pulled over on State St.-1 on the northeast corner of the launchpad and 1 above it on the cupola.

I went down to Mill St. to get off the busy State St.  As I arrived I could no longer see the bird on the cupola but the launchpad juvie was still there. At 6:05am a juvie came flying in enticing  its sibling to fly off with it-they circled KO a couple times then I lost sight of them. I drove to the west side of KO parking on Verona St. and could see a youngster on the southwest corner of the netting that surrounds the playpen.

It stayed for about a half hour when Dot.Ca (DC) landed above on the southeast corner of the launchpad. LarryO  reported from the pedestrian bridge that a falcon had landed there. The juvie flew off heading south followed by DC. I lost sight of them but Larry said they went to the FCT both landing on the top arm. I made the short drive down Plymouth Ave. and parked across from Frontier but I only saw 1 juvie up on the top arm south side of the tower.

It wasn’t until the juvie flew off and I drove down on Church St. that I saw DC on the west side top arm and when I looked on the larger computer screen I could clearly see him in my pics. Just goes to show once again how much difference light and the slightest angle can make. I decided to go up to the top of the Sister Cities Garage for a better view of things and to my surprise when I got up there all lined up in a row on the east side platform railing of FCT were our 3 Falconeers just hanging out in the pouring rain.

Click on my pics to view the full version

Voyager was nice enough to raise her right leg giving me a view of her red over yellow bling so that I could ID all 3.  Judging by size I concluded that the next 2 after her were Rosetta in the middle and Baron on the far right.

Click it

DC took off to the west shortly after I arrived and 10 minutes later Rosetta flew the same direction followed a minute later by Baron leaving Voyager and I all by ourselves.

10 minutes later Voyager stuck her head up looking west and appeared ready to take off and take off she did in a blur flying east very fast and coming up the rear from the west was her brother and sister followed by an adult (I think was DC).

They all flew over to the east side of OCSR where the elevator shaft is located but it is not visible from up on the garage so I made my way down and headed over to the Broad St. Bridge (BSB). From there I spotted a falcon under the northeast wing of the Times Square building (TSB) with its back to me so I then went down to the hole parking behind Keybank. From there I was able to determine that it was a juvie and I also found a fledgling on the lower rear roof of the TSB on the northwest corner around 7:30am.

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I drove over to Broad St. by Fitzhugh St. to see if I could ID the roof juvie but just as I pulled up it flew off to the north quickly leaving my field of vision. At this time I went to the Brighton Site (BS) to see if I could find Pigott home. I haven’t seen her in quite a few days now. She wasn’t there initially but after making a stop in Brighton I re-checked BS and found Miss Pigott on the west side on a top window ledge where it meets the west extension. She had her back to me and what a beautiful back it is after not seeing it for so long!

I spent 15 minutes with her and in that time she did some stretching for me so I could see her still tattered tail feathers. She doesn’t seem to have suffered from her ordeal last month as she is looking just fine otherwise.

I left her prettiness to check downtown one more time to see if I could find Beauty as I hadn’t seen her on my watch. As I approached downtown from Exchange Blvd. I saw a falcon fly from behind the TSB heading east over the river where I lost it behind the Blue Cross Arena. I headed directly over to the east side but found no PEFAs on any of the buildings over there. As I went across the BSB I saw nothing from there and then my last stop was the Andrews St. bridge where I can see many buildings north,west and south. No luck, but I was smiling for having seen 5 of our 6 Rochester Peregrine Falcons  despite the rainy conditions thus ending my watch at 10:15am! 🙂

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

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqiZ6

http://youtu.be/ssW9ma68ZPk
http://youtu.be/osObxEZ1awk
http://youtu.be/Dk0Tgl9tkyo
http://youtu.be/KSnilGQ_-tk

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 1st, 2013 at 2:57 PM and is filed under Fledge Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.