By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The starting temperature today was 64 (F) 18 (C) with fog when I first arrived-the sun shone bright and burned that fog off in short order

Click on my pics to see the full version

It was a perfect morning for a fledge watch with wall to wall sunshine and blue skies-the only problem was our Rochester Peregrine juvenile Falcons forgot to show up! It’s time to resolve ourselves to the fact that they are growing up, learning all the skills they need to survive and branching out of downtown.

I was out last night for a short time-there were some Cedar Waxwings down in the river shrubbery flitting from one spot to the other and the Black-crowned Night Heron was in his tree by the Rundell Library preening.

Now for this mornings watch-around 6:30am I thought I saw a falcon chasing pigeons toward the Cornhill district. I drove that way but didn’t find either falcon or pigeons. I then did my usual route around downtown starting near the Times Square building and Broad St. Bridge area, then to the east side by Xerox, HSBC,Midtown including the heart of downtown-Liberty Pole Way and the Sibley Tower Building. From there I made my way to Plymouth Ave. by Frontier Field-where it showed the fog that was being eaten up by the sun.

I checked the Kodak Office Tower, Frontier Communications Tower and then to the Andrews St. Bridge and finally the Pont de Rennes pedestrian Bridge at High Falls at 7:05am. It was there that I spotted a very leggy falcon on the northeast wing of  Times Square and it looked like it had food.

I left directly and shot straight down St. Paul St. to the Broad St. Bridge where I arrived just in time to get a pic of Dot.Ca, king of downtown Rochester! He did have food and flew off before I could say falcon-it was a small package, maybe a sparrow, and that was the extent of my time with a PEFA today.

I spent the next 2 hours searching unsuccessfully for our elusive falcons. The river level was up again as the west lock, south of the Court St. bridge was flowing fast. The only flat rock above water was on the south side of the bridge giving the gulls and ducks somewhere to hang out and preen.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I drove around the city looking but I threw in the towel at 9am deciding to save some gas for future watches. Keep smiling! 🙂

Click on the links below to view videos from todays watch

http://youtu.be/24IQq-hUR2U

http://youtu.be/z2xqWdYoq64

http://youtu.be/PcyVdkO9aKs

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2014 at 4:42 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.