Falcon Watch 04/18/10
On what turned out to be a beautiful day, Cleo the Catahoula Leopard falcon-watcher-in-training and I headed to the Broad St bridge. Getting there, I found Lou, Dana and Carol P actively engaged in the pleasure of falcon watching.
It was a pretty good watch. We had Archer in 2 stoops from the OCSR. The first one took Archer way out over the river, headed south – way beyond Court St. We got a look at the target and it appeared to be a hawk, but as I said it was pretty far out. Archer cranked the wings all the way until he got close when he went into a 45 degree descent after the hawk.
We lost sight of him, but he showed up again.
Later on while we were in the Thompson parking lot, Archer did a vertical stoop from OCSR down the southeast face. Unfortunately the buildings got in the way and we lost sight of him about half-way down. It was a glorious stoop, and something I had not seen since the Kodak days. He went right down the face of the building. It is always amazing to me how they can pull out before hitting the ground.
We had one other burst of activity. Archer was flying around the parking lot going behind buildings and appearing again over our heads. Best guess is that he was spending time and gaining altitude to get back to OCSR.
Pretty good day for falcon-watching.
April 18th, 2010 at 10:53 PM
and you missed the crazy pigeon that decided to go up into the elevator shaft! Archer landed on top of the old Changing Scenes Restaurant bldg. just above. When the pigeon came out, Archer gave chase! Over the river, and the lower buildings on the east side of the river. The pigeon was lucky and escaped. It would have been amusing if Archer had caught the pigeon, who was as big as he is! 🙂
April 20th, 2010 at 9:08 AM
Carol P…. maybe you can tell me which falcons I have been watching at the UB South Campus… http://www.buffalo.edu/webcam/falconcam.html…. Ive been watching the Rochester group for a couple years but have never been there with any of you.. I hope to bring my GF from England up in a few months and maybe someone can show us how its done!!.. I hope mariah and kever are okay!