Morning watch 4-18-14
By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK
The weather was great this morning-starting temperature was 43 (F) 6 (C) light wind with sun and blue skies
I checked ustream to see that Beauty was on the eggs (there are 4 total) when I left for downtown. As I made my u turn on the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) to face the Times Square building (TSB) I spotted Dot.Ca (DC) way up on the top of the northwest wing ring at 6:36am.
DC was in hunt mode and watching below him-there must have been some sparrows or starlings down in between the wings. Suddenly he saw something bigger and flew off to attack a crow that was too close to his nest-he thumped on it hard, several times above the Democrat&Chronicle building before they left my field of vision behind the Blue Cross Arena.
I watched Beauty fly out of the nest box and go to the base of Mercury but I didn’t see DC go to the scrape to cover the eggs. Donna and Campgee let me know that he had done so. Thank you ladies! Beauty did some preening and looking around, then she flew off going low over the river and out of sight to the south.
A few minutes later she showed up under the northeast wing of TSB at 6:54am. She stayed up there for the next 20 minutes just hanging out and doing some rousing and stretching.
Beauty flew off at 7:16am going behind the TSB like she was looking for something or trying to flush out a bird. She came back around and went to the base of Mercury.
Larry stopped by around 7:30am and while we were chatting Beauty flew off Mercury. I didn’t see where she went and after Larry left I drove to the Brighton Site-there were no falcons seen. 🙁 I made my way back to the BSB at 8:15am just in time to see Beauty land on the base of Mercury and start eating.
Beauty stopped eating less than 10 minutes later, picked up a small piece of leftovers and went to the other side of the base where I couldn’t see her from the bridge. I went down to the hole to see if she was still on the base or had flown off-she was there and I caught her as she went up onto the green part of the base.
I got distracted by a phone call and missed Beauty flying off from the base. When I finished up I looked up to see Beauty was on the Mercury money bag.
A few minutes later at just about 9am Beauty flew off- I ended my watch at this point. Beauty and DC have 4 eggs to incubate as she is done laying them and now we wait about 33 days for them to start hatching. There will be many smiles when that happens! 🙂
Click on the links below to view my videos from this morning
April 18th, 2014 at 10:48 PM
You know, MAK, you do such a good job at this photo journalism thing, there must be some way for you to get paid for it! Not by rfalconcam, I understand, but some company would love to have a daily blogger to keep their firm in the public eye.
April 18th, 2014 at 11:46 PM
Well thank you so much for the sentiment Alison. I appreciate it! 🙂