By Rochester falcon watcher MAK

The plan today was to go to Niagara Falls and check to see how many hatchlings there were for Sage. She had asked Joyce if she could do this as she and DEC watcher Jackie would not be able to for a couple days. As of  yesterday 2 of the 5 eggs had hatched. Naturally when Joyce asked if I wanted to join her I said yes. Our first mission was to find out where Dot.ca(DC) was for he hadn’t  been downtown all morning to see Beauty or his new egg.  When we arrived downtown we found DC under the northeast wing and Beauty was in the nest box with their egg. 10 minutes later Beauty flew up under the southeast wing and DC went down to the deck of the nest box and got his first glimpse of the egg.

A minute later he was in the nest box touching and rolling the egg to form his bond with it. It was a tender moment to say the least. Next thing we knew he was out the box and mating with Beauty under the southeast wing. I guess that’s what you call celebrating Peregrine style! lol When they were done he flew around the area doing his happy dance flight before leaving. Joyce and I stayed about 20 minutes waiting for him to return and decided we better get going to Niagara Falls as it was after 11:00am already. We left the Beautyful one under the southeast wing soaking in the suns rays.

When we arrived at Goat Island on the U.S. side of Niagara Falls about 1:20pm it was sunny with blue skies as far as you could see. The resident female Diamond was in the scrape incubating.

Make sure to click on pics for full version

The unbanded male, named Gorge’s George by Sage brought a food package and mom fed the eyases. Joyce was able to determine that there were 3 little fuzz ball heads being fed looking through my scope. So 1 egg hatched since yesterday with 2 remaining.  She flew out and cached the leftovers and returned. A while later he flew in to relieve her and take over the incubation duties. I spotted her on a window south of the scrape after she flew around a bit.

The mist from the falls started drifting over to us from a shift in the wind so we packed up and headed to Buffalo. First stop was the south Grand Island bridge where I spotted a pefa under the bridge in a couple different spots.

We left for downtown as the day was getting shorter stopping at the Statler building nest site. From the 26th floor of the Rand building we could see a pile of white fluff in the scrape but no adults were in our view.

Next stop was Central Terminal where we were disappointed to see no falcons. We did see a man on the lower roof below the scrape and thought it odd that no pefas were at least checking him out. Maybe one was in the nest box with the babies and couldn’t see him. We left not feeling good about not seeing anyone there. Our last stop was the grain elevator where we saw nothing also. After a long day we headed home as the sun was setting in the western sky. Another fantastic day of falcon watching in the books giving Joyce and I something to smile about! 🙂

Check out the links below for more pics of the days events and 4 short videos of  the falls

http://pix.kg/p/544498775213%3A159481372/scl

http://youtu.be/AlfPGmGnGa8

http://youtu.be/59IOVf1-Htk

http://youtu.be/wjYBfAKtaos

http://youtu.be/KF7MwlaiorE

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2012 at 11:01 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.