By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Check!, Check!, Check!, Check!, Check! Five Checks! Five Rochester Falcons Found!

Beauty – Check!
Dot.ca – Check!
Baby Eyas – Check!
Pigott – Check!
KPT – Check!

Of course we’ve been seeing Beauty, Dot.ca and the eyas (who by the way is growing like a weed!) on the RFalconcam cameras daily. It’s the two youngsters living on the edge of town, one to the south and one to the north, that are hard to find. I am happy to report that both Pigott, at the BS location, and KPT, the Kodak Park Tiercel, are thriving and staying in their chosen corners. Now, if only these two youngsters would find each other!

This past week, Rochester has been going through a heat wave. Temps have been hovering around 90 degrees with high humidity. Usually by this time, our eyases are much older. They’ve either fledged or are ready to fledge. This year’s eyas is much younger by comparison.

It had been awhile since we had seen Pigott out at the BS location. Many of the Watchers had been looking for her with no luck. I went there and checked out the building on Tuesday (7/3), after work. She was nowhere to be found, so I headed downtown. I found Dot.ca on the kicked back foot of the Mercury statue. He looked like a 2nd wing on the back of the fleet-footed Roman god. I parked my car on the Broad St Bridge and took some pictures. I could see Beauty on the platform in front of the nest box, guarding the young eyas. After a few moments, Dot.ca spread his wings and took off. He passed over me heading south.

I quickly grabbed my binoculars and watched as D.C. met up with a Red-tailed Hawk and a couple Crows that were harassing it. Since D.C. is an equal opportunity territory defender, he started to whack both the RTH and the Crows! He drove all of them down into the tree line and then continued south. Hmmm, where could he be heading? I quickly tweeted out what happened and jumped into my car. It was time to head back to the BS location. I was thinking to myself that was where D.C. was heading.

As I approached the building, I could hear loud whining coming from the scrape area and I could see D.C. on the SE corner of the building. The whining was definitely not coming from D.C. I parked where I could watch the scrape and yep, there she was. Pigott was sitting there, crying her heart out. It was so good to see her after not seeing her for over a week. We all love to know that all of our Rochester Falcons are safe.

After spending some time with Pigott and D.C., I decided to head over to Kodak Park. Could I make it 4 out of 4? I hoped so.

I was starting to lose light when I arrived at KP, but I could see that KPT was sitting in what I believe is his night time roosting spot. He was on the east side of the east smoke stack, on the east side of the lower catwalk. There is a metal arm that juts out just above the catwalk with a wire above it that supports the arm. He likes to sit on the wire where it connects to the stack. Success! All 4 Rochester Falcons seen this week! Some day I will find time to go through my pictures and post an album. 🙂

RED, WHITE & BOOM!

Last night there were a bunch of us in the live streaming video chat room waiting for the fire works to start. I was very curious to see how Beauty would react with such a young eyas in the nest box. It was almost 10 pm, the time the fire works would start. Beauty was on the perch outside the nest box. The eyas was sleeping in the back left corner, next to Orville. At 10 pm, the first boom sounded, a loud BOOM! Beauty jumped, spread her wings and took flight! Would she return?

She did return a few minutes later. As the fire works intensified, Beauty flew back to the nest box and entered it from the right side, facing the eyas. As the loud noises and flashes of bright lights continued, she moved in closer and turned around, until she was totally blocking the eyas from the outside world. She stood like that, on alert, until the fire works ended and well after.

After the noise and light show ended, she remained in position for about 5 minutes, before finally relaxing, very slowly. You could see her muscles relaxing as she finally turned her head to look back towards where the fire works were launched.

She fussed a bit with the eyas, gently touching it and pulling at the white fluff. The baby stirred and woke up briefly, then right back to sleep. Yes, the eyas slept though the whole thing! Finally, she stepped out to the perch and looked around. A few additional booms, brought her right back to the eyas and then finally total silence. That is, except of course, for the mass exodus of people from the downtown area. From the street below, we could hear the honking of horns and people yelling and laughing. These were more familiar sounds to a Peregrine that chose to nest in a city setting.

Happy 4th of July Everyone!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2012 at 11:15 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.