Fledge watch 8-13-13
By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK
The dawn loomed wet as it showered on and off and a bit humid with a temperature of 64 (F) 18 (C) at 5:45am
I spent this morning with just one juvie-Rosetta! All others eluded me for the 4 hours I was on watch. I first found her under the large satellite dish on the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT) perched where I’ve never seen a falcon before. Our 3 Falconeers have shown me a lot of firsts this season. Rosetta next flew up to land on top of the dish briefly before taking off very fast to the east toward the river.
Click on my pics to view the full version 
10 minutes later Rosetta flew in from the north with a small package and took it to the northeast corner of City Place to eat. I went up on the Sister Cities Garage roof to observe her.
Rosetta spent 25 minutes eating and then she flew off heading down Fitzhugh St. along side of City Place about 2 floors down from the roof. When she got to Main St. she hung a right and headed west out of my view. I did the search route around the city to no avail so I went to Brighton- there were no falcons to be found there either. Larry stopped next to my car for a quick chat then he headed off to work.
Returning downtown I had no luck locating any falcons so I went to the pedestrian bridge at High Falls-again no PEFAs seen but that doesn’t mean they weren’t parked on that gorge wall somewhere blending in. At 8am cam watcher Donna said there was 1 and possibly 2 falcons on FCT so I went there right away. They left before I got there flying west according to Donna. Thanks my friend! I then went to the Broad St. Bridge to see what was going on in the river. I was surprised to see how low the water level was between Broad St. and Main St. considering the High Falls were rolling along at full force when I was there.
As you can see there were lots of Great Blue Herons strutting their stuff. After another look around downtown I took a ride north up Lake Ave. to Kodak Park at W. Ridge Rd. I checked the buildings there with no luck and nothing was seen along the way to or from as I stopped at the Kodak Hawkeye plant on St. Paul Blvd. on the way back downtown. It was 9am and I hadn’t seen a falcon in over 2 hours so I decided to call it a watch. As I started out toward home, Donna texted that there was a falcon on the FCT platform-this time I got there in time to find Rosetta near the northeast corner eating.
All I saw was her tail at first from right below in front of City Hall. I walked over to the northwest side of the Frontier building standing on Montgomery Alley with the Plymouth Ave. Open Door Mission behind me to get the best look at our big girl with the blue feet.
She began to move south on the platform and that was when I got the money shot of her white over blue taped leg band telling me what I already thought-it was Rosetta. I then went back to City Hall to share space with her before flying up to the south side railing and taking off to the southeast whining.
I spent an hour with Rosetta that I wouldn’t have gotten had it not been for Donna letting me know she was on the FCT. Thanks a lot! I’ll take all the help I can get these days as the juvies and their parents are staying scarce. I was happy enough to watch Rosetta and so I ended my watch at 10am with a smile on my face! 🙂
Check out the link below to see Rosetta-I had more videos but I’m having trouble uploading them. Sorry
