By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Nettie chose the hottest, most humid day to take her first flight.  When she took off from the building, Kathy O and I first thought it was one of the boys.  But after a quick check, we found that it was Nettie who took off from the north end of the well wall.  She headed north, flapping and losing altitude, until she landed on the roof of the Wilder Building.  After a few moments, she showed herself on the east end of the building.  This is the same building that Baron (from last year) fledged to.  She stayed on this building all morning, running around and ending up on the south side where she could see the nest box and her sister Tesh above.  MAK returned from running an errand and Larry O stopped by for a quick look.

In the meantime, the boys, Nor’easter and Mercury, were tearing up the sky.  They were busy chasing mom and dad and landing on different buildings close to the Times Square Bldg.  By afternoon, the weather hit 96 degrees and boy was it humid!  Shade was at a premium.

It wasn’t til afternoon that Nettie took her 2nd flight.  She flew over me and ended up on the base of the Mercury statue, moving around to the shady side.  I found Nor’easter below her on the railing.  While Nor’easter took a mid-day nap, Nettie was busy checking out the odd pieces of cached food that Beauty had placed there. During the afternoon, the temperatures continued to rise.  Susan C and Brian H joined me for about an hour.  During that hour, Nettie decided to take off and head towards the Times Square Bldg.  She gained altitude nicely, but came up short on the landing on the southeast wing ledge.  Nettie turned back towards the building, this time aiming for the well wall, where her sister was.  She JUST missed the landing and turned towards the north.  By this time, she was tired and losing altitude.  She flew over the Wilder Building and out of our view.  Susan, Brian and I split up.  After not finding her, both Susan and Brian had to leave.

I continued the search on foot.  While I was crossing the Sister Cities Bridge, about half way over the Genesee River, I heard a juvie vocalizing loudly.  Beauty flew in and landed on the 2nd IBeam down (north side of OCSR) and was looking west.  I took that as a clue and checked out the roofs of the buildings.  There she was!  Or at least I was pretty sure it was her.  I took a quick picture of the roof line and headed over to the Sister Cities Garage,  From the top, I was able to find the roof that Nettie had landed on.  She was on a round metal vent on top of a building just north of the Powers Building, across from the Cross Rds Building.

Nettie was looking back towards the Times Square Bldg and bobbing her head up and down.  She was getting ready to fly again.  Her wings spread wide and she was off, heading south, back towards the Times Square Bldg.  I quickly texted that she was heading that way and walked back to Aqueduct St (aka “the hole”) as quickly as I could.  By the time I got back there, I could see no falcons anywhere.  I quickly checked my texts and found one from Shaky.  Nettie had returned to the nest box!  Woo hoo!  That made me very happy!  🙂

I was soon joined by fellow Watchers Kathy O, MAK, Pat and Lisa McK.  At 7:00 pm, I ended my watch.  Tomorrow is supposed to be another very warm humid day, with a chance of thunder storms during the afternoon.

There was a lot of activity by all the Rochester Falcons today.  Three fledged, one to go!  Here are some pictures from today’s watch.  Enjoy and goodnight!

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2014 at 11:10 PM and is filed under Fledge Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.