By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

I started my watch with no falcons at Seneca Towers (ST) but things picked up when I got downtown. At first I didn’t find anyone but after a ride around downtown I spotted a falcon on the 2nd arm of the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT) from the Andrews St. bridge (ASB). It looked small to me so I suspected it was Dot.ca (DC).

I drove over to Fitzhugh St. for closer viewing and found that it was indeed DC. At first the sun wasn’t shining on him as he was raising his big yellow feet (BYF) quite a few times.

The sun hit him and then DC flew off to the southeast rather nonchalantly.

I set out to look for him and after a trip around downtown I ended up on the ASB where I spotted 2 falcons on the northeast corner of the Ellwanger & Barry building. Beauty was eating and DC was watching.

I made my way over to the exit driveway of the Holiday Inn on State St. right across the street from them for a nice close place to share space with Rochester’s resident downtown pair of Peregrine Falcons.

DC did his best to look away and lull Beauty into a false sense of security as he always does when he wants her food. He acts like he’s not interested and then he springs into action! Gotta love his tactics!!! Beauty played right into his hands/talons by turning to face him. Now he had a better shot at grabbing the leftovers.

Sure enough, at 8:32am DC moved in-there was a struggle with lots of vocalization, with each of them clutching  the remnants of a pigeon they dropped off the edge a couple feet down the side of the building before breaking apart with DC the clear winner. He flew off to the southeast with his prize and the Beautyful one followed right behind him.

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I was not prepared for that and it happened so fast that all I could do was watch, so sorry, no pics of it. I expected them to be on OCSR but when I got up to the Broad St. bridge to look I found Beauty on the Mercury money bag (MMB) and no sign of DC.

She started preening and cleaning her BYF’s as I looked on from the north sidewalk of the bridge. Her crop was half full.

I left her and did a quick run around town to look for DC but never did find him so I continued on to the Medley Centre. I didn’t see any falcons there and when I got home to Seneca Towers at 9:40am I spotted a falcon on the west side railing thru the trees but it was gone when I pulled over to check it out. Today, the biggest reason I ended my watch with a smile was because of DC and his silly food antics! 🙂

Click on the links below to see today’s videos

https://youtu.be/YCQNeOMoiWg

https://youtu.be/aS_Clf_xKQg

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016 at 2:17 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.