Morning watch 5-13-14
By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK
This morning was overcast with a temperature of 58 (F) 14 (C)
I arrived on the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) at 6:15am to find Dot.Ca (DC) on the 2nd ibeam southwest side of OCSR plucking feathers and preparing breakfast. I went to the hole for a closer look.
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15 minutes later he called out and seemed to slip off the edge and I thought he dropped his prey but as you can see in the blurry take off shot there is a piece of red meat on the ibeam.
I didn’t see what direction he flew as he disappeared behind buildings but I surmised he went north since he didn’t show up at the nest box. I found him from the Andrews St. Bridge on the 3rd ibeam down northwest side of OCSR and he had food, so I drove to State St. across from the Rochester Plaza Hotel. As I pulled over DC flew off, heading toward Times Square so I pulled out behind him but got stuck at the traffic light at Main and State. From there I spotted Beauty flying out from the nest box so I drove to the hole directly. The Beautyful one was on the base of Mercury chowing down on the small package DC had provided her.
Beauty finished eating about 10 minutes later and started cleaning herself up and feaking on the green part of the base.
I went to a different spot on Aqueduct St. where the back lighting wasn’t as bad to share space with Beauty. There were some bug catcher birds flitting past her as she perched-I guess they think just because a falcon has just eaten that it won’t come after them. lol
At 7:20am Beauty turned, spread her wings and flew off going directly to the nest box to give DC the boot-poor guy got less than an hour with the eggs for his efforts. Perhaps the chicks inside those 4 eggs are starting to talk and chip away at the shell and Beauty wants to make sure to be there when they start hatching, which should be within the next few days.
DC wasted no time flying out and over to the Mercury money bag (MMB). It had started to briefly sprinkle a little rain at this time.
After some preening and scratching DC flew east at 8:02am out of my line of vision as the Thomson Reuters building obstructed my view.
Again I went to the Andrews St. Bridge to look around and I found DC on the 2nd ibeam north corner of OCSR. I went to my spot on State St. across from the Rochester Plaza Hotel to observe DC aka Whitey.
I watched as he stood perched upright moving his head from time to time to check out his territory. He seemed to be settled in for a while so I called it a watch at 8:30am. As I was pulling away, DC flew off OCSR heading north and I headed west smiling! 🙂
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