By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

My Watch was delayed by thunderstorms passing through the area.  Because of the storms, I did not arrive downtown until 6:00 pm.  I first checked the Frontier Communication Tower (FCT) (nothing), Kodak Office (nothing), north side of Old Changing Scenes Restaurant (OCSR) (nothing).  A whole lot of nothing.  Next stop, the Broad St Bridge (BSB).  Finally, a falcon up on the base of the SE wing of the TSB.  It was Beauty.  So, where was Orion?  The search continued.  Joyce, MAK and Brian drove by and waved.  I told them I was going over to the Andrew St Bridge to get a better view of the FCT.  Still no luck.  I drove over to the FCT.  There I met up with Jeanne and Lynda.  Larry was somewhere nearby, but I never saw him.  Since there were no falcons here, we all ended up back at the Broad St. Bridge.

Kathy O texted that she was over at the Brighton location and there were two falcons there.  She assumed that it was Pigott and Dot.ca.  They were both quiet and on opposite sides of the building.

Jeanne spotted Orion up on top of the elevator shaft at the east end of the OCSR.  Now gathered on the BSB were Kathy O, Joyce, Lynda, MAK, Jeanne, Lisa McK and me, Carol P.  It was a beautiful evening, now that the rain had stopped.  A falcon flew in from the north carrying food, coming towards us.  We looked up to see that Beauty was gone from the TSB, so this had to be her.  Orion came off of the elevator shaft, screaming. We all watched excited that maybe, we might see a food transfer.  Beauty carried the food clutched in her talons, heading towards Mercury.  Above the river, Orion flew up to meet her, but he just could not figure out what exactly he needed to do.  When doing a food transfer, he would need to flip upside down to grab the food offered by Beauty.  He tried twice to take the food from his mom, but he couldn’t figure it out.  Yet.  I have no doubt that a Watcher will soon be reporting seeing a successful food transfer.  He was very close tonight.

Both landed on the base of the Mercury statue.  The food offered to Orion appeared to be a wing and a small part of a bird, possibly from a pigeon.  At first Beauty attempted to feed him, but he would have none of that.  He fought with her until she finally left him to feed himself.  Beauty flew off towards the east.  The last we saw of her this evening was seeing her fly behind the B&L building.

We all settled in to watch Orion “wrestle” with his dinner.  That’s the best way to explain it.  He would jump on it and pull on it and drag it around  the base of the statue. Wings out and jump on it!  Pull off a piece, eat it and drag it to the other side.  Talk about playing with your food!  He is a very entertaining young tiercel to watch.  lol  Finally, after having his fill, he settled down.

We went back to keeping one eye on him and one on the birds/critters on the river below.  The Black Crowned Night Heron juvie flew down the river from the north and ended up on the rocks of the river below us on the south side of the BSB.  We all walked across the street to watch this young one, run and jump from rock to rock.  Obviously he was attempting to hunt, but we didn’t see him catch anything.  He was just as playful as Orion.  Ah, to be young again.  🙂

The BCNH flew over to the east bank of the river to the base of the tree that Jeanne, Larry and I had seen him in last night.  He flew directly over a Great Blue Heron.  The GBH did not like sharing HIS river with this young whippersnapper.  So the GBH kind of stalked the young BCNH.  Every time the GBH got close, the BCNH would leap into the air and fly to another spot.  This continued for awhile before it got too dark.

By the time we looked back up at Orion, he was gone.  None of us had seen him leave.  A little later, Joyce reported that Orion had returned to the calf of the Mercury statue.  At 8:30 pm, I decided to head home.

It was nice seeing all my Watcher friends and I was very happy to see Orion and Beauty attempt a food transfer.  Just another lesson for young Orion to learn.

Tomorrow is another day and I plan on being downtown for my late afternoon/evening Watch.  Hope you all can join me!  Remember to keep your eyes to the sky!  There is so much going on up there!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2012 at 10:47 PM 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.