By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Saturday – 10/25/14

Went on a road trip with Kathy O, Lisa McK and Dana to Syracuse to visit with Pigott and her unbanded and unnamed mate.  On our way we stopped at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge.  This is one of my favorite spots.  We weren’t disappointed, in fact we were thrilled to see 10 Bald Eagles and a large assortment of ducks we were able to ID with the help of Lisa’s bird book.  Pintail Ducks were a life bird for me.  They are beautiful.  Two juvie Bald Eagles were hanging out together and chatting with each other.  At the Knox-Marcellus Marsh we saw 8 Bald Eagles; 2 flying over the marsh and 6 on the ground, five surrounding one juvie eagle that was mantling food.  There was only one adult in that mix.

We then spent the day at Syracuse, mostly searching for Pigott and her mate.  We saw no falcons until the male came in to hunt at about 5:00 pm.  It was fun watching him as he stooped after birds over the city and landed on different buildings.  As our light was fading, the Crows started to stream into the city, so like Rochester.  Finally, a 2nd falcon zipped through and landed on the Chase sign.  About 15 minutes later, the male also flew to the Chase building.  By this time it was too dark to see them, so no way to positively ID them.  I do believe that it was Pigott coming in after spending the day elsewhere.

During the day, we checked out the whole city, but were unable to find them.  We were all able to finally see two falcons at the end of the day.

Sunday, 10/26/14

I didn’t get downtown until 5:00 pm.  When I was parking on the Broad St Bridge, a falcon flew in from the east, over the river and landed on top of the Mercury statue.  There was a lot of activity on South Ave across between the South Ave Ramp Garage and the Riverside Convention Center.  Lots of police and fire fighters.  I took a few pics and then moved closer.  I was shocked to see a helicopter landed on the street, blade spinning.  It was a mercy flight copter.  When the engine started to crank, I quickly changed to video as the helicopter took off and flew directly over me heading southwest.  Now that wasn’t something I ever saw on my falcon watch!  Joyce later texted me that there had been an EMT convention downtown and that the mercy flight helicopter had landed there on Thursday.

When I looked back at Mercury, the falcon was gone.  From the Radisson Hotel, I could see a falcon up inside the elevator shaft on the south ledge with its back to me.  Sorry to say, I was never able to ID this falcon as Dot.ca or Beauty. I remained downtown until 6:30 pm, when it was too dark to see anything.  Up until that time, no falcon had landed on top of the Xerox building.

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