By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

The summer weather continues here in Rochester, NY, with sunshine, blue skies and temps in the 70’s (F).

I had a meeting I had to attend at 7:00 pm, so I headed downtown a little earlier than normal, arriving at about 5:30 pm.  Pat had reported that there was a falcon on the Xerox Tower.  First I checked out all the other falcon spots before heading over there.  From the Broad St Bridge, I spotted a falcon on the west side of Xerox on the 6th column in from the northwest corner. I headed over to the south side of Xerox.  From there, I could see a 2nd falcon.  Dot.ca was the falcon on the west side and Beauty was at her spot, 5th column in from the southeast corner.

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Dot.ca took off and when I caught up with him, he was on the south side of OCSR on the top IBeam.

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Joyce and Brian H joined me on the Broad St Bridge.  Soon after we noticed that Dot.ca was gone from OCSR, we heard ee-chupping and vocalization from the east.  That’s when we noticed that there were three falcons in the air and two were chasing one.  Based on size, we believe that it was two females and a male.  This is the only picture I was able to get of all three.

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After checking her pictures, Joyce was pretty sure that it was three adults.  It broke up quickly.  Dot.ca landed on the southwest corner of Xerox and one falcon flew over us, heading towards the west.  We were unsure whether the falcon that flew to the west was Beauty or the 3rd falcon.  At this point, we could only see two falcons.

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Dot.ca took off and flew fast, quick wing beats, heading northwest.  We followed his flight until he went behind some buildings. He was obviously on a mission.

Since all was quiet I decided to head out to my meeting, but first I wanted to check the Frontier Communication Tower and Kodak Office.  As I was driving down State St, I saw a falcon flying around the Kodak Tower.  It was obvious to me that there had to be another falcon up there somewhere since the flying falcon was diving on something on the northwest side.  Just as I was parking my car, two falcons came off and the chase was on, with lots of vocalizations.

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The falcon doing the chasing broke it off and headed south back towards downtown.  The other falcon returned to the Kodak Tower and landed on the southeast corner of the launchpad.

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This falcon moved in where I couldn’t see it, just before Joyce arrived.  We both checked out the launch pad from all angles, but neither of us could find a falcon up there.   Was it gone or just hunkered down out of sight?  MAK tweeted that she had checked out the Seneca Towers location and was unable to find any falcons there.

What we witnessed tonight wasn’t too aggressive, more a chase to drive out the intruding falcon from their area and lots of loud vocalizations.  Of course our thoughts go to Billie who usually hangs out between Hawkeye and the lake, north of downtown. Could this have been her checking out the area?  Or was it a migrating female that just happened to be passing through and thought she’d stop by for a visit?  At this time, there is no way of knowing.  But you can bet the Rochester Falcon Watchers will be out keeping an eye on the situation.

Goodnight everyone!

I’ll leave you with a few pictures of the Black-Crowned Night Heron we saw hunting on the river before the 3rd falcon showed up.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2014 at 10:47 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.