By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was 62 (F) 17 (C) with calm, sunny conditions

Click on the pics to see the full version

From my apartment at Seneca Towers (ST) I checked the Hawkeye (HE) plant a little after 8pm and could see the brothers playing talon tag over the river so I grabbed my camera and went out to the west side balcony on my 16th floor. They had stopped flying and were perched side by side on the north end of the roof over there. Joyce had reported seeing an unknown adult over at HE earlier in the evening and she also saw Billie on the south side window ledge of ST.

At one point while I was watching the boys Seth came flying in from the south past me and up towards the northwest end of ST. I just barely got a shot of him before he disappeared. I watched the sun set in the western sky. If you check out my snippet video you’ll see it go down in stages. Below are the first and last pics of it.

I started my morning watch on the Andrews St. bridge where I spotted 2 falcons on the Frontier Communications tower (FCT)at 5:19am. One was on the 2nd arm and the other on the platform railing south side. I drove over to Fitzhugh St. for a closer view as it was still dark out and by the time I got there the railing bird was gone. I believe it was Dot.ca (DC) on the arm and probably Beauty on the railing as the archives show them both at the Powers nestbox just a few minutes before I arrived downtown.

DC stooped like a bullet near the church and I next found him over on the Kodak tower perched on the northwest corner of the netting. He flew south soon after.

I drove over to the Court St. bridge (CSB)and joined Dan who reported having 2 falcons on the jail tower at 5:20am so between the two of us we had seen all four falcons this morning. I had the adults and he had the juvies. The only thing I saw while there was an adult Black-crowned Night Heron. A little after 6am Dan decided to go to the High Falls. I met him over there after I had the Beautyful one on the northeast corner of Kodak below the netting from State St.. She flew off while I was tweeting.

When I got to the pedestrian bridge Dan was leaving as he had seen a falcon flying above Xerox so I followed him back to the CSB. Of course when we got there the show was over but Dan spotted somebody on the Spectrum tower. I wanted to know if it was a juvie so I drove over there and found it was Beauty. She was preening when I sent out a tweet and when I looked up she was gone so back to the CSB I went. She sure was a busy bird today!

Beauty managed to get past Dan when she flew off Spectrum and ended up on the Mercury money bag behind us. She then took off and started flying over near Xerox and Legacy tower (LT) coming in and out of view. She then landed on the slanted part of the LT roof below the spire. Pics pf her flying show that whe has pulled out feathers from both wings and her tail as she is in the midst of a molt.

She stayed up there for a few minutes looking around and then she flew southeast into the sun where we lost her from being blinded by the sun.

We ended our watch at about 7:30am. Boy, it was fun chasing Beauty all over downtown and you know I was smiling the whole time! 🙂

Click on the links below to see snippet videos from Seneca Towers and downtown

https://youtu.be/GPoU01yqBeI

https://youtu.be/MaPtaJvWkeU

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2017 at 9:22 AM 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.