By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Date : 5/14/12 (Monday)
Time: 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm
Weather: Partly Sunny/Partly Cloudy and temps in the 70’s
Watcher: Carol P
Places: Downtown Rochester (Times Square Nestsite) (TS)
Peregrines Seen: Beauty (at Times Square) & Dot.ca (at TS)

Beauty = B
Dot.ca = DC
Pigott = P (formerly known as SA or Sub Adult at BS Location)
Times Square Bldg = TSB
Brighton Site = BS
Broad St Bridge = BSB
Baush & Lomb Bldg = B&L Bldg
Old Changing Scenes Restaurant = OCSR

Earlier reports from Larry O had both Pigott & Dot.ca at the BS location. Also, around 3:20 pm, Brian H reported seeing three falcons flying over the downtown area. Beauty and Dot.ca for sure, but no ID on 3rd falcon except Brian was pretty sure it was a female. Could this have been Pigott? Or another female migrating through? There is no of knowing for sure. Luckily the 3rd falcon left pretty quickly.

After reading Brian’s report of 3 falcons seen, I headed downtown to make sure everything was quiet. When I arrived on the Broad St Bridge at 6:30 pm, I checked all the buildings in the area, starting with the Times Square Bldg. I found Beauty on the B&L Bldg at the NW corner. She was looking west towards the TSB and her nest box. I checked around but could not find any other falcons.

She remained on the B&L Bldg for about an hour, before taking off and flying directly over me heading west. Dana, Lou and I noticed that she appears to now have a split wing tip on her right wing. Possibly a missing primary feather? Beauty flew up to the TSB and landed at the base of the SE wing.

At 7:30 pm, Dot.ca flew in from the south, past Beauty’s location, landing on the base of the NE wing directly across from her. He was carrying prey. DC settled into prepping the food by plucking the feathers. The slight breeze was carrying the feathers across the front of the building where they floated around Beauty. She intently watched what he was doing.

Finally there were no more feathers floating in the air, he was done prepping the food. He gave a soft, whiny ee-chup and looked at Beauty. The last time he had food on this spot, she flew over, ran to him and grabbed it from him. Hope you all enjoyed that video. 🙂 Did he expect the same this time? Nope! She wasn’t budging.

So, since she wasn’t coming to him, he decided to take the food to her. Well, maybe not directly to her. How about the nest box? Yeah! I’ll bring it to the nest box! DC grabbed the prey in his talons and flew past Beauty. He kept heading south and “U” turned back towards the TSB. I watched as he landed on Camera #4 in front of the nest box. Well, that was an invitation Beauty could not ignore! She took off and flew directly down to the nest box landing on the platform in front of him. DC remained on Cam #4 and she looked up at him from the platform. This lasted all of 5 seconds. Beauty jumped up onto Cam #4 with DC and she grabbed the food from him and then jumped back down to the platform.

DC remained on the camera for a short while before flying up to the SE corner of the level above the nest box. When he left, Beauty started eating the offered meal.

It was 8:00 pm and time for me to go. It was another good day with all three Rochester Falcons seen.

Remember to keep your eyes to the sky! There are so many wonderful things up there to see!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 9:44 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.