By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was a beautiful, sunny day – perfect for watching falcons! Joyce picked up Brian and I for a trip to Niagara Falls to check on the falcon family residing there in the gorge and to scope out the tight rope going across that Nic Wallenda will be walking on Friday night.

There were all kinds of  TV and camera crews set up along the walkway area on the American side of the falls. I believe the set up for this tight rope act is far enough away that it won’t disturb the juvenile falcons and hopefully won’t cause a stir with the adults either. That’s just my opinion,we’ll see. While we were there we could see the young white falcons in their nest box all sprawled out taking a snooze. Mom brought in a small morsel to share before flying out and landing on a window north of the scrape. Both mom and dad were seen flying in the gorge.

We left for Buffalo to check on the juvies at the University of Buffalo(UB), the Statler site,Central Terminal(CT) and the grain elevators near the water. Our first stop was the south Grand Island bridge where we had no luck finding a falcon. Next was the Statler nest site where we could see the white of the juvies there in the scrape but no adult sightings.

We then proceeded to the grain elevators along the shoreline there in Buffalo. I have been there many times without seeing anything but today would change that record for not only did we see 1 but 2 falcons and they flew in tandem to escort a red-tailed hawk out of the area. Brian spotted the first one on the Holcim building and after we lost them chasing the RTH Joyce found one on another grain elevator for which I don’t know the name.

We left this site and went to CT for a quick look as the sun was going down and we still had to go to UB for a fledge watch! One adult falcon who we believe was Gleig the female at CT now since Stella and Stash were ousted came flying in and landed on one of the perches by the scrape.

It’s impossible to see into the scrape at this site so we couldn’t see any babies. Having only stayed a short time we departed for UB and our fledge watch. Upon approaching the campus we spotted 2 juvies on the water tower near the university.

We watched them do some typical juvie flying  that entertained us very much. After a while it was time to find the other 2 kids and so we drove over to MacKays tower where the nest box is and found Andromeda on the corner of Clark Hall.

While watching her Yankee, the resident male was seen on the tower on a ledge near the scrape. After a while he flew out to the water tower and escorted the 2 boys back home for the night. Not sure where Athena, the transmitter girl went off to but when we left both BB,the adult female and Yankee were on the south side of MacKays tower with Andromeda still on that corner of Clark Hall and the boys were on top of MacKays somewhere out of view.

And so another falcon watch in the books leaving the 3 of us with a smile on our faces for the great fun we had with the Buffalo and Niagara Falls’ falcons. 🙂

Click on the links below for additional pics from the day and a couple short videos of sweet Andromeda

http://pix.kg/p/774708606213%3A1400286832/scl

http://youtu.be/Mv5FIPlCl4A

http://youtu.be/VAU8zXqetvY

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2012 at 1:00 AM 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.