By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

After spending my Watch with Beauty yesterday, it was time for the whole family to make an appearance.  At 6:00 pm, I joined Joyce and Brian on the Broad St Bridge (BSB).  The sun was full in our face, but it felt wonderful.   So I brought out my chair and joined them for the evening Falcon Watch.  Brian pointed out the Green Heron fishing on the north side of the bridge on the river below.  There were also a couple of Kingfishers flying up and down the river chittering to each other.  A couple of Great Blue Herons were out also.  The most patient of our fisher birds.

Oh, you were wondering about our falcons?  Well, of course there were falcons, two to be exact.  Both were on the south side of the OCSR, Dot.ca on the top IBeam and Orion on the 2nd IBeam down.  At 6:40 pm Orion left the OCSR and landed on the Times Square Bldg (TSB) on a ledge below the wings on the south side.  Jeanne & Dan joined us and we all sat back and enjoyed watching Orion jump, skip and hop his way back and forth on the ledge.  At one point it did look like he found a very small scrap of food that he ate.  The young tiercel was hungry.

It wasn’t long before we heard a cry from above.  We looked up just in time to see Orion chasing Beauty, passing over us heading for the Xerox building.  Beauty went behind the building and we were sure that she probably landed, but Orion swung around the building and landed on the NW corner.  He didn’t stay long, flying around to the back of the building and not coming back into sight.  Was he with Beauty?  We waited to see if they would fly again, but they didn’t. We went back to watching the critters on the river.

At 7:3o pm, Dot.ca moved down to the 3rd IBeam down and by 7:40 pm, while we were watching the juvie Black Crown Night Heron fish, Dot.ca was gone.

I decided to call it a night and said my goodbyes, but first I was going to take a trip around the downtown area, hoping to spot our falcons.  I did!  Orion was on top of the shell of what remained of the old Midtown Plaza.  He was eating at the SW corner.  I quickly let the other Watchers know.  I parked in front of the Xerox Bldg where I had a better view of Orion.  But time had run out for any kind of decent pictures.  It was getting dark and the almost full moon was behind me.  I watched until Orion finished his meal and started to hop, skip and jump around the roof of the building he was on.  He really does make me laugh!

Around 8:10 pm Orion took off and I ran down to the corner just in time to see him knock Beauty off of an antenna on a building on the east side of Midtown.  He chased her around a bit and then split off from her.  I saw Beauty fly up to the top of the Xerox bldg, south side, and land on her favorite night roosting spot.  I headed back to the BSB and found Jeanne and Dan still there.  Brian and Joyce had left.  I told them what had happened.  By this time, it was dark.  I looked over at the OCSR and carefully checked the IBeams.  Yep!  There he was!  We could just barely make out Orion on the 2nd IBeam down, tucked into the elevator shaft.  It was night time for Orion and me too!

Time to head home.  On the way home, I did stop at KP, I always do.  I could not find KPT in his normal spots.  Joyce reported that she stopped at the BS location and saw a falcon there that she thought was light in color, so she thought that maybe it was Dot.ca.

It was another beautiful day to spend Falcon Watching with my fellow Falcon Watchers and seeing all three of our downtown falcons was a wonderful thing.  Tomorrow I will definitely be out and about with my eyes to the sky!  Goodnight everyone!

Here is the link to my Shutterfly picture album with some pics from today.  No sign on needed.  Enjoy!

share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=2AcsmzZk4ctWE1

In the last picture of the sun between the wings on the TSB, check out the little bump on the lower ledge on the left side.  That would be Orion. lol

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 at 11:19 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.