By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

I was woken up by a clap of thunder and the flash of lightening at 4am and when I left for my watch at 5:30am it was sprinkling and 66 (F)  19 (C)  humid degrees.

Still dark when I arrived at the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT) I couldn’t see any PEFAs nor did I see any at Kodak Office (KO) or the Times Square (TSB),Broad St bridge (BSB) areas. I did however find Beauty on the northeast corner of HSBC but she flew off before I could pull over heading northwest toward the river. I made my way back to City Hall and found Dot.Ca (DC) on the top arm west side of FCT.

A couple minutes later a small falcon (probably Baron) came streaking  thru from behind the tower over the platform flying southeast out of view quickly. A couple minutes later DC took off to the southwest just as fast and vanished into the semi dark sky. I left for the Pont De Rennes pedestrian bridge where I found Dan . He said he had seen 3  flying near FCT right after he arrived and that one had landed on the jail tower and left and 1 landed on FCT. That one was still there on a north side white beam below the platform eating.

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5 minutes later I spotted a PEFA on the west side railing of HSBC. Too much of a distance to tell if adult or juvie.

A few minutes later it left HSBC. There was a lull for the next 25 minutes when at 7am the FCT falcon left and Dan followed suit as he left for home. I drove over to FCT and found Baron on a northside beam with a full crop. As a matter of fact today featured bulging crops.

He left after 5 minutes passed and it looked like he had landed on the small tower but after viewing from a different angle I found that he did not but rather flew away to the west.

I searched downtown but came up empty for falcons so I drove to Brighton to find Pigott around 8am. She was at the east end of the south side vent and she was checking out everything that moved.

She stayed up there for 45 minutes faking me out several times as she would spread her wings and lunge forward a bit making me think she was taking off.  And lots of stretching!

I got a text from fellow watcher and good friend DebbieH that as she got to work she saw a falcon on the jail tower. Thanks Deb! At 8:45am Miss Pigott flew off to the northwest and didn’t return.

I returned to the pedestrian bridge and checked the high falls gorge area and saw nothing but I did see a falcon on the top arm west side of FCT. Off to City Hall I went, actually Church St where I was able to ID it as DC, he had a full crop and a small package in his talons. I also identified 2 falcon watchers on the sidewalk as Linda (Braveheart) and her son Tim.

I left them to park my car in front of City Hall and while I was over there I found Beauty on the east side a bit lower than the large satellite dish on FCT.

I walked back over to where Linda and Tim were standing in front of the Hochstein School of Music and while I did that DC flew off the arm and landed under the platform near the southeast corner.

Voyager was over on a north side beam with a bulging crop!!! She was busy picking at her talons,looking around and even took a little food induced nap.

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Mostly she whined -she whined at dad,she whined at mom, she whined at Baron when he came in landing below her and then he took over the whining.

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Beauty moved over to the south side where we could see her and she had a full crop as well. So we had 4 fully cropped falcons on FCT and I was thinking that Rosetta was probably somewhere nearby filling her crop.

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Baron was quite antsy and noisy, eventually at 10:55am he took off flying southwest. I called it a watch and Linda and Tim left as well. Full crops and noisy fledglings made this watcher smile today! 🙂

Click on the links below to view my photo album and videos

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http://youtu.be/-puQwPzP_1Q
http://youtu.be/tGU2JU88yR8
http://youtu.be/pn21H-zRFT8
http://youtu.be/PtK_C4cff_M
http://youtu.be/1ei36sXpLAc

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 8th, 2013 at 7:32 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.