By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was a bit hazy this morning with a starting temperature of 65 (F) 18 (C) and you could feel the humidity moving in by the end of my watch

Click on my pics to see the full version of them

I hadn’t seen my mentor Dan in a couple days, so when I rounded the corner onto the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) and saw him in his spot I instantly smiled. He told me Nettie was up on the head of the Mercury statue and that he hadn’t seen anyone else. She wasn’t there for long when she took off fast across the river heading northeast between the Radisson Hotel and the Andrews Place apartments. Pigeons came flying out from every direction in what we call panic mode.

All was quiet for the next 5 minutes until Dan spotted 2 falcons flying near Xerox. The 2nd one didn’t stay long and left the female (most likely Nettie) after half a minute or so. Then we settled in for the show as she kept trying to land on one of the skinny antennas and ended up on the usual antenna that the juvies like to land on and hover above. Dan spotted one of the Black-crowned Night Herons in the tree near the Rundell Library-leaves were blocking its face.

KathyO joined the watch around 6:45am and got to see the tail end of the aerial show before the juvie landed on the northwest corner of Xerox. I’m sure you get tired of the silhouette pics-unfortunately the mornings are usually kinda dark and with the sun so low it’s hard to get around it-so I put some color in one of my pics to brighten things up a bit.

A few minutes later CarolP came by to watch with us but the action was all over except for a couple white balloons carrying a camera with a long tether on it over by Chase. I took a walk to the east side of the BSB to get a better angle on the heron in the tree-he watched me the whole time as I approached.

Around 7:30am the juvie flew off Xerox without letting any of us know lol, so we had no idea what direction it went. I checked out the river and found the ducks were returning as the water level had gone down and the river wasn’t running as swiftly as it had been earlier this week after the 4 plus inches of rain we got.  A guy was getting the window washer apparatus ready to go over the edge of the Xerox roof-this is most likely why there were no falcons around there.

Gulls were gathered on the south side of the Court St. bridge and there was some foam on the river bank-I’ve seen this up by Seneca Towers at times too. It looks like snow! Larry and Harold stopped by to see no falcons with us. Dan left soon after and we decided to go look for falcons. I checked the east side, Larry checked the west side then joined Carol and Kathy on the Pont de Rennes pedestrian bridge. I joined them after I came up empty.

Our falcon family had flown the coop-perhaps mom and dad took them to some of the unknown hunting grounds that we watchers don’t know about. The High Falls were not gushing as hard as earlier in the week and there was a Great Blue Heron on the small building at the south end of the river island below us standing on one leg. Dana joined the watch as well.

A small bird tried catching a very loud Cecada in the air near us and that’s all the action we had until Carol noticed a juvie walk from the southeast corner of the Kodak Office launchpad to the northeast corner and vanish to the north. I was ready to end my watch so i said I’d check it out on my way out of downtown. I was able to see tail feathers of a falcon tucked up behind the northeast rocket of the launchpad.

The police had all the west side roads blocked for the Puerto Rican festival parade as I left downtown at 9:45am. There were no tweets after I left so I assume the falcons had not appeared for the other watchers. Even though it was the slowest fledge watch I’ve had since the kids started flying I still had a smile from having some company on my morning watch! 🙂

Click on the links below to view todays videos
http://youtu.be/XbNHeH4mQU0

http://youtu.be/uMz5PII5hzI

http://youtu.be/3uxI1pNiQ5I

http://youtu.be/xqetGmihnKY

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2014 at 4:29 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.