By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was a warm start with a delicious breeze, hardly a cloud in the sky and a starting temperature of  68 (F) 20 (C)

Make sure to click on the pics for the full version

I arrived downtown at 5:30am and joined Dan on the Court St. Bridge (CSB). Rachel was on the deck while Charlotte was sharing the wall bump with her brother, Ontario. He had ants in his pants right from the get go as he was running the wall and jumping back and forth between the nest box roof and cam 4. It was obvious he was going to fledge today. Dan said that Beauty and Dot.ca (DC) had been hunting over by the Spectrum Communications tower earlier. About 10 minutes later the Beautyful one flew in and landed on cam 1 as all three of the kids began squawking and flapping their wings.

DC flew in with food around 6am and took it to the top I-beam southeast side of OCSR to prep it before dropping it off to the kids. Beauty had flown past him to see what he had then went to the base of Mercury. Rachel grabbed the small package of food and did not share.

DC went up under the northeast wing of the Times Square building (TSB) after the drop. A few minutes later Beauty did some flying in front of the kids then landed on the Mercury money bag (MMB). A few minutes later she flew after a small bird over by the Hyatt hotel and returned to land on the main cam. She was watching Rachel hog the food and soon jumped down and tried to get it from her but I don’t think that happened . Beauty left soon after and went to the heel of Mercury.

A couple minutes later at about 6:40am it happened-Ontario flew from the nest box roof over to the ledge across from the nest box. Fledge #1 for 2017! Dan was about ready to leave as he rarely stays past 7am so I left and parked down in front of the Blue Cross Arena (BCA) to keep an eye on our brave young tiercel.

Ontario was head bobbing like crazy trying to get a bead on his new surroundings and then he got bust feet. He walked down the entire south side of TSB to the back of the building where the lower roof is located. I went down Broad St. to follow his adventure when he disappeared behind it out of my view and no matter how far down Broad St. I went I couldn’t see him and the sun was directly behind TSB making it even harder to see.

I don’t like it when I can’t see them because for all I know he flew off the building and I would not know what direction to look. Luckily he was a good boy and came back to the south side and eventually made his way around to the front of TSB where everyone could see him on cam again. Right about that time Joyce came by and said she was going down to the hole and Carol tweeted that she was over there. I joined them shortly after and Beauty showed up landing on cam 1 to watch Ontario as well.

At this point it was clear that Ontario wanted to rejoin his family. DC showed up landing on the northwest wing ring at the very top of TSB. Linda (Braveheart) joined the watch and DC stooped on a small bird missed it then went up under the northeast wing.

Around 8am Ontario flew down to one of the columns between the nest box and the ledge he fledged to.  He spent some time on the ledge right below the nest box. KathyO joined us in the hole at this time.

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About half hour later Carla joined the watch just before I left for a bit. While I was gone Buffalo watcher Carol (Lukka) had joined the group. She had been watching last night and stayed over to help us today again. When I got back Ontario got busy again making the short flights between the columns and landing very well for a new fledgling. He was trying so hard to figure out how to get back up to the nest box area.

Ontario went back to the other small ledge in the shade to rest. DC stopped by to check on him landing on the column to the right of him. This was around 11am and at this time Dan showed up to watch with us and a while later Brian and Randy also came by.

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DC flew off after a few minutes and did some flying in front of TSB trying to show Ontario how it’s done. Then he landed on a small ledge below the well wall and started keeping an eye on Charlotte who was at the end of the wall flapping her wings.

Beauty was up with Rachel on the deck and at one point we had all 5 in view.

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I left downtown a little after noon and when I got home to Seneca Towers there were no falcons to be found. I ended my watch at 12:30pm after sharing many smiles with my fellow watchers! 🙂

Click on the links below to see today’s videos

https://youtu.be/QbMJDoEihPA

https://youtu.be/DNaQKMG8DmI

https://youtu.be/ThG3Ie6blS8

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 11th, 2017 at 4:50 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.