By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

It was a mostly cloudy day.  Not very good lighting for taking pictures.  But it wasn’t raining and it wasn’t snowing.  It was a very nice winter day.

My good friend and fellow watcher Kathy O and I decided to go out and look for falcons.  Our first stop was the Brighton Site (BS).  It had been over a week since I had seen the female there.  We circled the building twice, but could not find her.  It was time to check out the other tall buildings in the area.  While Kathy drove, I was able to look for a falcon.  There was a small blip on a corner of a building.  I quickly checked it out with my binoculars.  PEFA!  We have a falcon!

We found a spot to park near the building, which turned out to be the DSS bldg.  Based on size it was a female and I could not see any bands.  Could this be our BS female?  We weren’t that far from that bldg.

About 15 minutes after we arrived, she took off and flew up to one of the windows on the south side of the building, knocking another bird off.  The chase was on!  This wasn’t a pigeon, it was another, smaller Peregrine Falcon!  She chased it off and then they both returned.  The smaller male landed on top of the building and the female landed on a level below.

<— Female Peregrine Falcon

<— Male Peregrine Falcon

First the male, then the female took off, hunting over the buildings to the south.  Neither returned to the DSS Bldg.

Jeanne joined us on the watch and we headed back over to the BS location to see if they had gone there.  No luck finding them there either.  I was not able to see any bands on either falcon in any of the pictures I took, so I’m not sure if they were banded or not.

This is the only picture I was able to get of the female when she flew over us.

We said goodbye to Jeanne and headed downtown where we joined Joyce.  Both Beauty and Dot.ca were on the Frontier Communication Tower’s southeast box.

We had to end our watch.  It was time to join Lisa and Dana.  We went out to Avon to see if we could find the Short-eared Owls.  We parked near a field and watched two Harriers skimming the tall grass.  Every now and then one would drop down to the ground hunting.  Just after dark, two, maybe three, SE Owls appeared, flying over a farmers field.  They were chasing each other playfully.  Love seeing these winter visitors!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2017 at 5:56 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.