Morning watch 9-3-14
By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK
It was a refreshing morning as the humidity was much lower than the last few days-sun and blue skies ruled with a starting temperature of 63 (F) 17 (C)
Click on the pics for a full version
I made my way over to the east side after having seeing no falcons around the rest of downtown. I pulled over on Woodbury St. and spotted Beauty on the 5th south side column of Xerox-her spot. I left and drove down to Chestnut St. where the traffic light is very long and managed to miss her as she was gone when I pulled over in front of Martin Luther King Jr. Park formerly known as Manhattan Square Park. Beauty however, was flying above Bausch & Lomb and Xerox going in and out of view behind the buildings.
When I didn’t see her after a minute or two I left for the Broad St. bridge (BSB) to have a look around from there. After studying the jail tower I noticed the shape of a falcon opposite the disk near the 3rd arm.
I tried viewing from the Court St. bridge, Troup St., Fitzhugh St. and finally the best spot was on Plymouth Ave. near the intersection with Broad St. I had to be a distance from Beauty in order to see past the jail itself since she was so low on the tower.
There was heat coming up from the roof exhaust on the jail distorting the view as Beauty looked around and flew east 5-10 minutes later. It really shows on the take off shot and in the video I took of her.
I followed suit and headed east myself where I found Beauty back on her 5th south side column of Xerox. No problem getting there in time this go around as she stayed put for a lengthy period of time. At first she did a lot of looking around and then she settled in for a long preening session.
Twice, she tried extracting a pellet and I thought I saw a small piece exit her mouth on one of the heaves. The Beautyful one spent over an hour up there preening, scratching, rousing and working on that pellet.
At 8:40am she flew off toward the southwest fast into the blue sky before I could catch up to her and get a pic.
After 25 minutes of searching I found Beauty as I was on the Andrews St. bridge. She was on the Frontier Communications Tower north side 2nd arm down tucked in close to the pole. Again, I had to search for the best vantage point because of the position she was perched I ended up on Plymouth Ave. across from the Open Door Mission. I was surprised that I didn’t get silhouette shots because the sun was behind her-actually, it shone nicely on her right side feathers.
As I was tweeting my findings Beauty flew off toward the southeast. Now I had been wondering where Dot.Ca was all morning so my last resort was to go to Bragdon St. by the Radisson Hotel to take a peek up in the OCSR elevator shaft at the south side ledge. BINGO-he was there! Now I could leave downtown after having seen both our resident Peregrine Falcons.
I checked Hawkeye, Kodak research building and Seneca Towers to no avail. I ended my watch at 9:45am smiling from a nice, quiet morning falcon watch! 🙂
Click on the links below to view todays videos
http://youtu.be/aln0hyWnXOg
