Morning watch 10-1-11
By Rochester falcon watcher MAK
Brrr! It feels more like the 1st of November than October, which incidentally is my favorite month! Dark with a fine misty rain falling and 49 degrees out when I left my house. I managed to finally spot a falcon on the OCSR building top ibeam north side from the Andrews St. bridge but it flew off as soon as I stopped the truck. My right hand girl and trusty assistant on the cams Donna texted me that Beauty was at the nestbox so I headed over to the Broad St. bridge. Beauty was still up there when I arrived.
As usual she left when I wasn’t looking and 20 minutes later I spotted her on the Times Square building in a spot I’d never seen her before. I parked on Exchange St. in front of the main entrance to the Blue Cross Arena and viewed her on the south side of a column that was 1 level lower than the nestbox.
I didn’t see him at first but Archer was to her right at the southeast corner of the same level below where Jemison made his first flight.
Click on pics for full view
He had his feathers all foofed up to stay warm so I couldn’t see his white spot on the right wing and so I didn’t know if I had a different falcon or Archer. I soon spotted it and was able to tweet out that it was indeed Mr. Archer. Both he and the Beautyful one flew off to the northeast and I found them over on the Wilder building on the green strip. Beauty was to the left of the fire escape ladder and Archer was to the right. Both preening and staying out of the wind as best as they could.
I don’t often get these two close enough to tape them together so I took full advantage of this opportunity and made 2 tapes of which I will post the links at the bottom of this report. I watched them for about 15 minutes as they preened and occasionally Beauty whined at him and he for the most part ignored her. It got to be time for a pitstop, breakfast and meds so I ended my watch leaving Beauty and Archer on the green strip of the Wilder building satisfied that all was well in our downtown falcons’ world. Enjoy this first day of Rocktober, stay warm and smile! 🙂
October 1st, 2011 at 9:50 PM
That is definitely an Archer spot. Can’t say I’ve ever seen Beauty in that other spot though. They do love to keep us guessing. 🙂