Falcon watch 3-19-11
By Rochester falcon watcher MAK
My morning watch started with Beauty at the nestbox and Archer under the southeast wing of the Times Square building at around 7:00am. My watch ended at 4:45pm leaving our downtown Peregrine Falcon pair Beauty and Archer in their nestbox. Needless to say I’m tired and so I will sum up the whole day by saying I think this is the greatest show on earth!
Being my first spring and courting season in the field I am seeing so much action I can barely keep up! Other watchers I shared my watch with include:Dana.LarryO and Cleo, CarolP,Brian and last but not least Dan. I was very happy to drive onto the Broad St. bridge and see my morning watch partner Dan in his lawn chair on the sidewalk. That great smile of his beaming, this would be our first watch together since last fall. It felt good!
I split my watch between downtown and Kodak Park as we were trying to get an ID on the male that had been spotted there with Lady Pefa. We believe we saw a white feather on the right wing of this tiercel looking through Carols scope. Was he Archer, we are not clear on this. When I joined Dan at about noon he said that Archer flew in at 10:45 landing under the southeast wing of the Times Square building and didn’t go out of his view after that at any time.Carol tweeted at 11:25 that both pefas flew off 15 minutes ago. In my opinion this proves that Archer was downtown when we thought we had him at Kodak Park. Hopefully one of us will get a look to see if the male at Kodak Park has leg bands.
I saw plenty of flying,gliding, soaring and stooping today at both locations. I saw Beauty and Archer get together for a brief love moment. I saw Archer striking and chasing a Red-tailed Hawk out of downtown. I saw hovering Kestrels at Kodak Park. I saw pefas chasing those very kestrels. I saw crows being chased by falcons at Kodak and downtown. My favorite sighting of the day would have to be when Beauty flew off Times Square almost straight down and flew down Exchange St. southbound between the Blue Cross Arena and the Democrat and Chronicle building. She was maybe 30-50 ft. above street level and OMG I loved it!
I will end my report with the link for pictures of the day. Enjoy! 🙂
