By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

The title of this watch report says it all. Dana and I were ecstatic to find Artemis in the High Falls Gorge this morning. If not for a gull diving on Artemis, who was on a tree on the east side gorge wall, we would have never know she was there. Thank you gull!

Dana, Larry and I were downtown watching Nova, Neander and at least one juvie this morning. Since we were not able to positively identify the juvie or juvies we saw, it is impossible to tell if we had more than one.

There was a juvie that came in for a food transfer from Nova and flew south with the food. A little later, we saw a juvie on the Radisson that had a very full crop. This juvie hopped around for a bit and then laid down out of view.

Larry and Gimli left and Dana and I decided to head over to the observation deck at High Falls. The pedestrian bridge is now closed for one and a half years, so we could not look from there.

After arriving at the observation deck, our attention was drawn to a gull that kept diving on the tree line on the east side of the gorge. We expected to see a Red-tail Hawk there, but to our surprise it was a juvenile Peregrine Falcon!

At first, we couldn’t see a band, but eventually she did turn towards us and showed us her bright blue band. Hello Artemis!

While we were there, she took off three times and flew around the gorge, chasing gulls and pigeons, anything that flew. She was having a ball and so were we! Watching falcons in the gorge is always our dream!

On her 3rd flight around the gorge, she headed south, over the rail road tracks at the top of the falls and headed towards downtown. We believe she ended up on the Radisson.

After such a fun Saturday morning watch, Dana and I headed over to ST to check on Billie and Beau and their two juvies. We only saw Billie and Beau there. All the juvies are starting to wander a bit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2023 at 2:55 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.