By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Lake effect snow showers fell throughout my watch due to a cold temperature of 16 (F) -9 (C) some sun shown at times but it was mainly cloudy

While enroute downtown this morning I got a tweet from Donna that Beauty and Dot.Ca (DC) were at the nest-6:58am. When I arrived on the Broad St. bridge I noticed DC over on the top ibeam of OCSR and I didn’t see Beauty at the nest box so I don’t know where she was at that time. I went down to the hole to get closer to DC parking on Aqueduct St.

DC flew off and then as I pulled forward to see the nest box I saw a falcon fly in and back out from the nest box. I reported that it was DC but it could have been Beauty-I can’t say for sure. I drove around searching and at 7:30am I found both Beauty and DC on Kodak Office (KO). She was on the southeast corner of the launchpad and he was on the cupola above her.

Please click on my pics to see the full version

They stayed pretty much in the same position with Beauty glancing up over her shoulder at DC and whining every once in a while. The snow made it hard for my camera to focus as well as the fact that it’s a long way up to the top of the KO tower. They flew off simultaneously heading southwest and I wasn’t able to find them so I left to check the Brighton site (BS). There were no falcons present when I arrived there at 8:35am. There were however, 2 crows eating on the east side ledge that the rooftop tree grows on. It was most likely cached food that either Pigott or DC put there.

This is why Peregrines go after crows-because they steal there food from the pantry. So I went back downtown and promptly found the Beautyful one on the top ibeam near the south corner of OCSR. The sun was glaring down on her and washing her out which makes for poor photos so I went to Graves St. by Aqueduct Park to try and cut the angle of glare down.

It helped but still wasn’t good so I went over to the Radisson Hotel by Main St-it  was a bit better from there.

10 minutes later Beauty flew east across the river and out of my view behind the hotel.

When she didn’t show up anywhere in the vicinity I drove off to check out the east side but while I was gone Donna reported that Beauty and DC were at the nest around 9:11am and that Beauty left a minute or so later. (I thank you Donna, for your help on the cams both yesterday and today and also to Annette for yesterday as well.) So anyway, by the time I got back to the BSB at 9:15am there was no action at the scrape but thru the snow flurry that was falling I caught a glimpse of a falcon at the back of the northeast wing ledge. I parked in front of the Blue cross Arena on Exchange Blvd. and could see that it was DC with his white chest, and he was munching on something.

DC flew northeast after a minute or so and when I drove over to the hole I saw him on the top ibeam of OCSR southeast side and Beauty on the south corner. It looked to me like he was eating but less than a minute later he stopped so he might have just been cleaning himself and Beauty walked a few feet from the corner at this time.

They were 6 windows apart from each other and just stood there occasionally looking at each other or out over the river. At 9:28am DC flew off followed by Beauty 5 seconds later heading toward Times Square.

<DC      <Beauty

I drove down to where I could see the nest box thinking they were going there, but DC was nowhere to be seen and Beauty had landed under the southeast wing.

I ended my watch at 9:35am leaving Beauty on Times Square and I think DC probably went to visit Pigott. Keep smiling! 🙂

Click on the links below to view todays videos

http://youtu.be/rrl65iGW85k

http://youtu.be/J_Dh3AOQa4o

http://youtu.be/r6YmSgK9CZ8

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2014 at 1:00 PM and is filed under Falcon Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.