By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

After a night of rain this mornings weather had cleared up nicely. Partly cloudy skies and a starting temp of 63 (F) 17 (C).

The day would dawn in the east as it always does but it would bring a day of firsts for this watcher as I saw my first juvie on Midtown Plaza, I would have my first watch with Donna from Florida and I would see Peregrine Falcons flying in the gorge at High Falls for the very first time!!

Click pics for full version

Arriving about 5:35am I checked the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT) first then made my way to Kodak Office (KO) followed by the Times Square (TSB) and Broad St. Bridge (BSB) areas with not a falcon to show for it. Things were about to pick up as I drove to the east side and found 2 juvies in the air near HSBC and Dan sitting in his chair on the corner of Court and Chestnut St. in front of Manhattan Square Park.  One of the fledglings landed on Midtown Plaza and the other on the Frontier building after chasing a pigeon right in front of us.

The Frontier bird flew off almost immediately disappearing behind the building to the southwest. The Midtown juvie flew off stooping on a pigeon missed it and returned to Midtown only to fly off after another pigeon then back to Midtown landing on the east side. Shortly after a 2nd fledgling joined it.

One of them flew off to the north side of Midtown out of our field of vision and the other one walk/hopping sideways (the darnedest thing I’ve ever seen) down to the southeast corner and started eating something. Larry stopped by to tell us he was going to the Pont de Rennes pedestrian bridge at High Falls hoping the juvies would go fly in the gorge for him again. Dan and I stayed with the sure thing as we were being treated to all 3 juvies right then and there.

Suddenly the 3rd juvie flew into the picture with number 2 and coaxed the Midtown juvie off to fly around HSBC with them. When they were done 2 landed on Midtown and one on the SUNY building.

<Baron is on the left

The SUNY girl flew over to Midtown and we thought she landed on the roof out of view. Our other girl started eating up there and when she was finished Baron flew off and she joined him taking part in some talon tag as #3  from out of nowhere joined them. One juvie landed on the lower part of Midtown on the northeast corner and the other 2 flew off out of view and never returned.

This one disappeared around 7am and we would not see a falcon on the east side again. At 7:30am Dan left and I headed to Brighton. No falcon sightings over there but I watched a cute little Goldfinch eating some purple weed seeds.

Click it

Right after I left Brighton I got a call from Florida Donna who wondered if I might come pick her boyfriend Jim and herself up to go falcon watching as they were in town for a brief stay. I picked them up at their hotel and we went straight downtown and started searching for PEFAs. I took them to all the regular places including a trip to the top of the Sister Cities parking garage but we weren’t seeing any falcons. When we came down we spotted one on the jail tower below the satellite dish but when we got to Troup St. for a closer look it was gone. Our last stop was to be the pedestrian bridge at High Falls-as we parked at Browns Race there was a cat sticking its head out a 2nd story window.

We were on the bridge only minutes when Donna asked is that a falcon flying near the falls and soon we had all 3 fledglings giving us a show we will not forget. After a little talon tagging they started swooping on a Great Blue Heron eventually driving it down into the water in front of the falls where they continued dive bombing it. It managed to fly away as they lost interest and went back to their flying games which included mini stooping each other as they encompassed the entire gorge area and landed on the rock wall for a little rest. I couldn’t believe our luck as this was the first time I had seen a falcon flying in the gorge and it was Donnas’ as well.

After a few minutes they were up and flying again and there was now 4 of them as one of the adults had entered the mix. They all landed on the rock cliffs on the east side of the gorge. Jim found where 2 of them landed but we didn’t find the other 2 with good reason-they blend in well! Dana joined us followed by CarolP and then KathyO-they too were excited that they could watch PEFAs flying at High Falls again.

Unfortunately I had to trash all my pics because the sun was directly behind the falcons making for some washed out awful photos but I did get a couple other critter pics down in the gorge.

<Kingfisher Click it

Dana and CarolP walked over to the observation deck to wait for the falcons to fly out from the cliffs below them but that didn’t happen so they came back to the bridge with the rest of us.

A couple juvies took off flying on the east side and made their way across the river with one landing on the top of OCSR and another on the FCT.

Donna had to be leaving so I took a couple pics of  her and Jim, then we were on our way.

I ended my watch at 10:45am some 5 hours after I started and I smiled during the entire extraordinary watch from start to finish! 🙂

Click on the links below to see more pics and some videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqiaU

http://youtu.be/AghscX0SOS0
http://youtu.be/WQ-Qey3YE3A
http://youtu.be/RBl8HQkjCpg
http://youtu.be/Br_Pu-Wi96g

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 3rd, 2013 at 6:02 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.