By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was partly cloudy with a chilly wind out of the north making the 60 (F) 16 (C) feel much colder to start my watch this morning.

I saw more deer today than falcons but that’s ok because I did see both Beauty and Dot.Ca and 2 out of 3 fledglings. I found Beauty on the east side of HSBC 15 minutes into my watch at 5:55am.

I got to be with her about 5 minutes before she stretched and took flight heading southeast until she turned into a speck in the early morning sky.

I looked everywhere between the east side and Kodak Office (KO) and turned up not one falcon so I went down to Browns Race and walked out on the Pont De Rennes pedestrian bridge at the High Falls. Dan was on the east end when I started my trek across from the west end. I  asked him for the scoop and he told me that there were 2 juvies and an adult flying off to the northwest earlier but that was all he’d seen. At 6:45am I was watching a big flock of gulls flying over by the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT) and behind them I spotted  a falcon who flew to the 2nd arm west side and landed.

Dan and I thought the posture looked more like an adult but from that distance we couldn’t say for sure. We missed it fly off and as I scanned KO with my binocs I spotted a falcon on the southeast corner of the launchpad. Closer inspection showed another was back on the ledge farther. DC was on the corner and Beauty was in the back crouched down like maybe she had food she wanted to keep for herself.

Less than 5 minutes passed when DC took off and Beauty came out to the corner of the launchpad. Dan watched DC fly directly to the FCT and land on the platform railing near the southeast corner.

Click on my pics for full version

Just about 7:30am DC flew off and Dan left for home ending his watch. At that time I walked down to the west end of the bridge to get closer to the Beautyful one.

10 minutes later as I was reading a tweet from CarolP Beauty left KO and I missed it so I have no idea what direction she went. I walked back to the east end of the bridge to meet Carol who had texted me of  her arrival. Around 8am I noticed a falcon on the northeast corner of the KO launchpad-it was DC and he had some fresh red meat below him.

He took off soon after and this is when I had my first deer sighting-it was a whole family on the west side of the falls.

<click it>

They walked back behind the buildings out of view and then I saw 2 more young ones at the edge of the gorge on the island that is in the gorge below the bridge. The young buck still had that velvety fuzz on its antlers as the doe walked in the water to get a drink.

Before I left to check the Brighton site DC made another appearance-this time on the southeast corner of the launchpad.

I returned to High Falls after seeing no PEFAs at the Brighton site. I decided to check out the view from the observation deck (my first time on it) which is on the east side of the falls before rejoining Carol on the pedestrian bridge.  I could see Lou had joined her while I was gone.

It was around 9am when I spotted 2 juvies flying over the gorge-one of them flew over me and I lost track of the other as I started recording the flight of the one nearest to me. I had some trouble keeping up and the camera had trouble staying focused as this young fledgling was moving fast!

The juvies disappeared as quickly as they appeared but it was thrilling for the minute they were there showing us their flight abilities. I then spotted another deer down in the thick greenery of the island munching on the foliage. And before I left the deck I took a pic of the falls and KO for a perspective from the observation deck.

I made my way over to the bridge with Carol, Louigi and Dana but we wouldn’t see any falcons in the next hour.  I saw some crows that at first I thought might be our fledglings and a Great Blue Heron down in the river fishing.

I ended my watch a little past 10am having spent time with nature in the heart of the city and you know that put a smile on my face as I left for home! 🙂

Click on the links below for more pics and videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqia2

http://youtu.be/9LppLij5mL4
http://youtu.be/aNB-iRrhgxU
http://youtu.be/VDKjNTCrUmM
http://youtu.be/ulY8IoqVX8c

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 4th, 2013 at 5:05 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.