By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was overcast and very humid  this morning with a warm starting temperature of 73 (F) 23 (C)

Click on my pics to see the full version

Normally, after I check the Andrews St. Bridge (ASB) I go down St. Paul St. to the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) and turn onto it with Times Square ahead of me. Today, I went down State St. and turned onto the BSB with the east side ahead of me and it was a good thing or I would have missed Beauty on the Chase building. She flew off soon after I pulled over, going into a stoop heading southwest over the river. As she got to near the southeast corner of  the Blue Cross Arena I spotted what she was after- a bunch of pigeons! Beauty flew up from underneath them, they scattered and I lost track of Beauty over near Cornhill. That was different-usually, falcons stoop down on their victims. We’re always learning about these amazing creatures!

I checked the river before leaving to look for falcons-from the south side of BSB I looked down and spotted a Black-crowned Night Heron fishing and the usual gang of gulls were on the flats.

40 minutes later after riding around downtown 2 or 3 times I found Dot.Ca (DC) on the east side of Xerox 7th column from the left.

DC remained there for the next half hour looking around the area, stretching and when he was ready to go he pooped and flew off circling the area a couple times and disappearing to the northwest behind Bausch & Lomb.

I didn’t have to look for DC very long-as I came down Broad St. toward the bridge I could see him up on the tippy top of the Times Square building (TSB) on the northwest wing ring. The best place to view him was on Broad St. by the Democrat & Chronicle building where I could be face to face with him. He watched all the little birdies in the area in between preening and rousing.

At 8:35 am DC flew off to the northwest-it would take me 30 minutes to find him again and I wasn’t able to find the Beautyful one. Notice what a big difference just a few inches can do to change the lighting on a subject in the take off shots below.

So I found DC on the large disk of the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT) from the ASB. I drove over to the City Hall parking lot to watch him eat breakfast.

I drove down to Fitzhugh St. in front of the Sister Cities parking garage to see if I could observe DC from the front as he had his back to me. I caught a short 3 minutes of him as he finished eating and slipped to the other side of the disk out of view.

Off I went back to the City Hall parking lot where I found DC under the southeast cube. He kept looking down so I grabbed my binocs to have a look-he led me right to his mate-Beauty was in the red section under him.

I had to go to Church St. in front of the Hochstein School of Music in order to see Beauty but I couldn’t see DC’s head-sometimes you have to give up something to gain something in life and falcon watching is no different. Beauty had a full crop which led me to believe that perhaps DC had been eating her leftovers. Beauty was very sleepy and her eyelids were getting very heavy as she finally shut them to take a nap.

I left them to it and on my way home I checked Hawkeye and my building Seneca Towers for falcons but didn’t find any. I ended my watch at 10:15am with a smile! 🙂

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

http://youtu.be/F2x9n2QCoX0

http://youtu.be/v7jHajwPG8w

http://youtu.be/VdDy2-Ry1f4

http://youtu.be/RUUvQ3kpKAc

http://youtu.be/mEO0HvF3kRE

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2014 at 5:04 PM and is filed under Falcon Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.