By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

I always love to meet fellow falcon fans.  Today I got to meet Maureen from MA and her friend Laura.  They were on vacation and passing through Rochester on their way to Niagara Falls.  So, this morning I picked up MAK and we went to the Broad St Bridge to meet Maureen & Laura at 10 am.  Brian H joined us and we spent a wonderful 2 1/2 hours visiting.

We were more than happy to show them all the Rochester falcon landmarks.  All the things they heard about in our watch reports over the years.  Maureen had been watching them since 2005 and she felt she knew all of us.  I love that these falcons bring so many people from all over the world together in friendship.  It truly amazes me.

I set up the scope and Maureen & Laura were so happy to see Orion and Beauty, who were at the nest box, up close and personal.  They were only able to stay for a couple hours, so we decided to head down to the pedestrian bridge we spent so many hours watching Mariah and Kaver’s young from.  Maureen especially wanted to see the gorge and the High Falls area.

Joyce met us there and we all walked out onto the bridge.  So many things were the same, but many things had changed.  The most noticeable change, to me, was the building missing at the east end of the bridge.  This had been Skye’s building, but so many of the Rochester Falcons would sit and rest on that building.  It was kind of sad to see a gaping hole.  Only the foundation remained.  This had been an old brewery building that had been falling apart for so many years.  I believe there are plans to build a visitors center & beer garden in it’s place.  Maureen and I walked to the end of the bridge and I showed her all the special spots, including the bowed tree and the falcon sucking tree where so many of our young would rest.  I even checked out the gorge wall looking for a falcon.  🙂

Just as we rejoined the others, Brian yelled out “What’s this?” and pointed north of the bridge.  We all looked up in time to see a falcon coming towards us, flying low.  It passed over us and we noticed the missing tail feather and split in the wing.  It was Beauty!  Yes, Beauty now has a split wing tip due to her molt.  Beauty flew over us and headed back towards the brewery, flying higher and higher.  We all watched as she eventually headed back towards downtown and we all saw her land on the nest box at the Times Square Bldg.

What an absolutely perfect way to end our visit with Maureen and Laura!  Thanks Beauty!

We all said our goodbyes.  I was really sad to see them go.  Safe trip ladies!

Here’s a link to my Shutterfly album with some more pictures from today.

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=2AcsmzZk4ctXUw

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2012 at 10:54 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.