By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Another pleasant bit of weather with a starting temperature of 55 (F) 13 (C)

Click on my pics to see the full version

I began my watch at 5am with Dan on the Court St. bridge (CSB). We could see one juvie on the southwest corner of Xerox in the darkness but it left when we were looking for the other members of this falcon family. Dot.ca (DC) flew in around 5:20am and landed on the southwest wing ring on Times Square (TSB). He was the only one we saw for about 10 minutes when he flew off to the Powers building, first landing on the railing then into the nest box. He was followed by Rachel and Ontario who kept flying past Powers to the north out of view.

A bit later a juvie showed up and landed on TSB under the northeast wing. Beauty showed up over at Powers and I assume she and DC did some bonding there. Dan noticed a small bird on the southwest wing ring and I was able to confirm that it was a robin. 5 minutes later I spotted both juvies on the northwest corner of the Xerox roof. The sun was behind them and so pics are not so great.

We missed them taking off but we saw them flying with an adult and Larry confirmed 3 flying near Legacy Tower (LT) and Xerox from his 16th floor apartment at Tower 280 (formerly Midtown). It had to be DC who had food over there because Beauty was still on the Powers cam and the next thing we saw was Rachel on the lower southwest corner of Legacy eating. Ontario buzzed past her a couple times then landed on the opposite south corner briefly then he was off again. Once more the lighting was horrible with the sun behind the east side buildings.

I happened to see a Great Blue Heron land in the river below the Broad St. bridge and a few minutes later a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron (BCNH) landed near him. The GBH chased the smaller heron out of there as he didn’t want to share his hunting spot!

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Larry and Zeke joined Dan and on the CSB around 6:15am. Ontario made another appearance near Rachel and then he landed on the slanted roof on LT. He promptly slid down to the end and had to fly off! It was pretty comical-you can see it on my snippet video. A robin landed on the street light near us and sang to us for a minute then flew off.

Beauty flew over to the jail communications tower (JCT) and Rachel finished eating. She then hopped up on the railing before taking off.

Beauty flew from the JCT and that was the last I saw of our downtown Rochester Peregrine Falcons. I spotted an adult BCNH on a log down in the river behind the library. Dan left after checking it out. It was on the hunt and a duck family was hanging out behind it in the shallows. Suddenly a GBH came in and scared the BCNH off-he flew over to the tree by the northwest corner of the library and the Broad St. bridge and vanished behind the leaves. This is where he has roosted in past years.

Larry was ready to head out and I had to leave too as I had an early appointment and a busy day ahead of me. Carol started her watch as I was leaving. I would have liked to see more of Rachel and Ontario but at least they were safe and sound after last nights fireworks and that was enough to have me smiling as I ended my watch at 7am! 🙂

Click on the link below to check out today’s snippet video

https://youtu.be/U4t-7QJoccg

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2017 at 5:43 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.