By Rochester falcon watcher MAK

Falcon games: rule #1 Don’t panic! After getting Carols’ tweet yesterday morning about the battling pefas I immediately went into nervous mode. Sue had already left for work and I was stuck at home with no wheels in which to go check on our Rochester falcons. I made some calls for a ride and got nowhere. I left a message with Dan explaining the situation. He didn’t respond until late afternoon saying that he had gone to KP and found no falcons there around noon-1:30pm. I had been checking the archives all day without seeing either Beauty or Archer visiting the nestbox. Dan didn’t check DT and so I started to get really unsettled. I had previous plans to go out last nite so I couldn’t go on a watch. Dan and Carol saw Unity at KP in the evening but no Archer and nobody went downtown to check on Beauty. I texted Donna around 8 or 9:00pm to have her check the archives and still at that time nobody had been to the nestbox. At 10:45pm on my way home I thought I saw a bump on the 5th column of Xerox(Beautys’ roosting spot at night). This made me feel a little better but I would truly be relieved in the morning when I could be sure I had seen the Beautyful one.

Fast-forward to daybreak. I searched downtown to no avail and after talking to Donna decided to go to Kodak Park to see if I could at least find Archer. If I could find him I’d know he was alright if  by chance he was involved in the battle high above KP as reported 24 hrs. ago by CarolP.  I spotted Unity on the north side of the tall still on the top catwalk.

Unity

Having not found Archer I left KP and drove back to downtown. I searched everywhere with no sightings of Beauty or Archer. The police had the perimeter around the FCT blocked off for a run or walk of some kind so I couldn’t get close to look up into the inner structure. I parked on the Andrews St. bridge and took some pics of the river that was drained quite a bit for what I assumed was some work being done down river just before the high falls. I then went to the Broad St. bridge and took more pics of the river. Starting to get a bit panicy for not having seen any falcons I drove over to the pedestrian bridge at high falls and took more falconless photos.

Truly I was sweating it at this point! I left there and headed back to KP after a quick sweep of the city. Upon my return I found Unity in the same spot as my previous visit but no Archer. Now I was in full panic mode! Where were Beauty and Archer? Were they alright or just hiding on me like they do. I made a decision to go home and have a fast breakfast and take my morning meds (as I’m sure my blood pressure was building) and go back to the downtown area. Just as I was starting to pull out of lot 77 at KP I noticed a falcon on the catwalk of the still to the east(right) side of the tall still. Was this Archer or had Unity moved over. I drove down to lower Weiland Road to where I could view the north side of the tall still and BINGO I could see her on the tall still and Archer on the east still. I breathed a sigh of relief tweeted it out and went home.

Archer

I returned downtown and searched the east side of the city and as I drove through the intersection of  Andrews St. and St. Paul Blvd. I saw a falcon on the 2nd arm of the Frontier Communications Tower. Goose bumps were now covering my body as I raced down to park on the bridge and get my binoculars fixed on it. Eureka,zowee,yipee,yahoo it was the Beautyful one!!!

Beauty

She was perched up there as if she didn’t have a care in the world (which she probably didn’t) for we humans are the ones that THINK too much! I tweeted the good news, sat there for a few minutes enjoying the view of our downtown female falcon and called it a watch!  WOOHOO!!!!  🙂

For my album of the day follow this link:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/sharing/shareRedirectSwitchBoard.jsp?token=607535982213%3A946256901&sourceId=533754321803&cm_mmc=Share-_-Personal-_-Email-_-Sharer-_-Top

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 6th, 2011 at 3:35 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.