By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

This morning it was chilly with a starting temp of 50 (F) 10 (C). Dan and I could actually see our breath up on the Pont De Rennes pedestrian bridge at 6am.

I arrived downtown at 5:45am and found a falcon on the southwest corner of the launchpad on Kodak Office (KO).. In less than a minute it flew out and back landing on the southeast corner of the launchpad. It was still a bit dark out and with its back to me I couldn’t tell if it was a juvie or adult.

Click on my pics to see full version

I left it to check the rest of downtown and when I reached the east side I found Beauty in the same spot as yesterday morning on the east side of HSBC.

She stayed there for the next 20 minutes preening and looking around. When she was ready to go she simply spread her wings and dropped off heading northwest over Clinton Square toward the river.

After I didn’t find any falcons I went to the Pont De Rennes pedestrian bridge where I found Larry and Dan at 6:30am. I asked Dan if he had seen the PEFA on the KO launchpad earlier and he said yes. He also told me that when he first got there 2 juvies came flying out from under the bridge and he thought they must have been roosting under there on a beam. He also said he saw all 3 fledglings flying in the area. 15 minutes later I spotted 2 falcons on the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT). 1 was near the southeast corner of the platform railing and the other right below it.

A few minutes later the railing bird was gone and a few minutes after that the other FCT bird flew to the Times Square building (TSB) landing under the northeast wing then taking off again.

Dan and Larry decided to leave at 7:15am and at the same time cam watcher Donna reported that there was a screaming juvie on the wall above the nest box. Thank you so much for the help!

I drove over to the hole to have a closer view of things-I was able to ID the juvie as Baron. He stayed there until 7:30am or so and then flew off squawking and landed up under the southeast wing before flying off to the west.

Baron returned a minute later and landed under the northeast wing.  A few minutes later I noticed movement at the back of the ledge. There was another juvie up there and it was eating and it stuck its head over the edge for a peek! As it came out to join Baron I was able to ID it as Rosetta.

The 2 of them kept running back and forth from the front to the back and on both sides of the ledge. I think they were sharing cached food that was at the back of the ledge.

<Baron <Baron&Rosetta <Rosetta

DebbieH came by on her way to work and was treated to seeing Rosetta up front and center under the northeast wing. We must treasure every look we have of the juvies now as they will soon be leaving the territory on their life journey. Rosetta flew off heading north as we lost sight of her behind buildings.

Debbie had to get going and I went up on the Broad St. Bridge to see if Baron was still up there-he was not so I went to Brighton to look for the elusive Pigott.  No change there she is still eluding me! I returned downtown and after a lengthy search I found Dot.Ca (DC) on the top ibeam north corner of OCSR just before 9am. I was parked on State St. across from the Rochester Plaza Hotel at first but he turned his back to me so I drove over to Bragdon St. across the river next to the Radisson Hotel to observe him from the front.

After a while I decided to go look for juvies and as I stopped on the Andrews St. bridge I spotted 2 falcons on FCT-1 on the top arm south side that turned out to be the Beautyful one and 1 on the east side of the platform that turned out to be Rosetta. I went over to City Hall to be closer to them and for IDing purposes.

<Rosetta> <Beauty>

At 10:09am Rosetta spread her wings started vocalizing and flew off to the southeast. I looked up to see Beauty was off as well!

Between Dan and myself all 5 downtown Rochester Peregrine Falcons had been seen  on this morning and I went home smiling! 🙂

Click on the links below to see more pics and videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqibQ

http://youtu.be/J9jEAGWHVLU
http://youtu.be/iP4TAvmzSsw
http://youtu.be/Ilt970tAgyk

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 5th, 2013 at 3:35 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.