By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The sun arose bright and beautiful today with a cool starting temperature of 51 (F) 11 (C)

I begin and end my days looking for Billie, Seth and their offspring whom I call Bith and Sellie, from the west side balcony of the 16th floor where my apartment is at Seneca Towers. Last night I was graced by Billie on the west side railing (south half-I can’t see north half of west side from building). She flew off soon after as she saw her kids had landed on the bridge ledge south side. I believe these are their overnite roosting spots. Bith has the darker front and Sellie much lighter which is about the only way to tell one from the other.

<Bith<Sellie

That’s where I left them at sundown last night. Fast forward to this morning 5:30am same west side balcony and Buffalo Billie was in the same spot as last night looking down at me from the west side railing. 5 minutes into my watch I heard the faint cry of a juvie, as I turned to look north I spotted one on the south side of the bridge. Billie then flew west crossing the river and disappearing near Kodak on Lake Ave.

With its back to me there was no telling which juvie it was but after 20 minutes or so the other one flew in landing near the first one then flying off immediately heading down near the tree tops and out of sight. I left for downtown at this point and as I pulled over on the Andrews St. bridge I spotted a falcon in the Powers nest box. It then went out on the east side railing-I believe it was Cadence.

She looks a lot like her mother, the Beautyful one, and I had to take a second look at my pic to see if it was Beauty or Cadence. A couple minutes later Cadence dove down and streaked above the Sister Cities garage out of view then popped up again for a split second over the inner loop only to disappear behind the Gorsline building heading north.

That was the last and only falcon I would see downtown this morning. I would spend the next hour and a half searching to no avail. While on the Pont de Rennes pedestrian bridge at High Falls I watched 3 deer grazing in the tall grass below.

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The water level in the river is very high right now from all the rain we’ve gotten lately so the current is fast in spots. There were 2 separate sets of Canada Geese riding the current-the first set which had 3 young ones went by too fast for me to get a pic of them. I got the 3 adults in the second set before they disappeared below the bridge as well.

I left for home at Seneca Towers- there were no falcons to be found there either. I ended my watch at about 9am smiling-even though it was a slow watch I still had the privilege of seeing nature in the big city! 🙂

Click on the links below to see my videos of falcons and other creatures

http://youtu.be/N7jOfuT9MN4

http://youtu.be/OQiGDE1QAPY

http://youtu.be/eZL8GONRvFw

http://youtu.be/2h-kGbs2STE

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2015 at 3:32 PM and is filed under Fledge Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.