By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

During the day, I received two tweets that Beauty was on the Mercury statue’s money bag hand.  One at 7:31 am and the other at 3:47 pm, both left by Shaky on the “Rfalconcam Now” section of the forum.  This is where forum members that are watching the cameras can post their sightings of the Rochester Falcons.  For example, if a forum member sees that Beauty is on the Mercury statue they can post that sighting on “Rfalconcam Now” and the Rochester Watchers will receive a tweet.  In this way, the forum members help out the Watchers by letting them know what they see on camera.  It’s a great tool, especially during the fledge watch.  Always nice to have help, especially when you are by yourself.  My thanks to all that help out in this way.

So, knowing that Beauty was seen on camera on the Mercury statue, I headed downtown to check on her.  I arrived around 3:45 pm and parked on the Broad St Bridge where I had a nice view of Beauty on Mercury.  She looked pretty antsy up there, moving and shifting and standing and flaring her tail.  Beauty was getting close to leaving Mercury.

At 4:10 pm, Beauty took heading northeast.  From the Broad St Bridge, I was able to see where she went, unlike yesterday when I was watching from the other side of the building.  Beauty headed towards the OCSR and then stooped.  She stooped on a Ring-billed Gull and almost caused it to dive into the river.  She chased the gull across the river and then turned, swooping up into the OCSR elevator shaft.  I’d seen her do this a lot recently, but usually after dark.

After she disappeared into the elevator shaft, the local pigeons went into a frenzied flight.  I could count 3 separate flocks; one over the river, one between me and the old Midtown Plaza and one over the Cornhill area.  Wow!  They must have thought that Beauty was going out on a hunt and they weren’t taking any chances.  I watched the pigeons swirling over the river for a little while, fascinated by their flight patterns.  Some pretty incredible evasive maneuvers!  I’m sure it was the lighting, but in the 3rd picture, the Pigeons turned blue!  Blue Pigeons!

After watching the pigeons for a few moments, I drove closer to the OCSR and checked the elevator shaft to see if Beauty was still up there. (4:30 pm)  Yep!  There she was, sitting on the south ledge, impossible to see from the Broad St. Bridge.  All our Rochester falcons have found this spot.  It’s well protected from the weather.  They can store leftover prey up.  I’ve seen Kaver store food there on what Dan S calls the “cold stone”.  It was out of the hot sun in the summer and it was easy to access.  I’ve seen Mariah stoop from there down the face of the building and over the river; a perfect blind for hunting.  All our Peregrines have used it at one time or another.  Beauty, like many before her, had found this sheltered spot.

After watching Beauty for awhile, I decided to head over to the BS location before it got dark.  On the way I received a tweet from Lisa McK at 4:30 pm; “At BS 1 falcon on south side.”  I had just arrived when Lisa joined me on the north side of the building.  She had spotted Pigott on the south side of the building and was driving around to see if she could find BST (the unbanded male).  We both parked on the south side of the building where we had a nice view of Pigott on top of the building.  While we were watching her, she was watching the 1,000’s of Crows in the trees behind the building.  (4:40 pm)

About 15 minutes later, the cold winds started to pick up and Pigott took flight.  She rocketed around to the west side of the building and landed near the nook.  She immediately took off and she streaked around to the front of the building.  We lost sight of her.  Lisa and I said our goodbyes and we both drove around the building searching for Pigott.  I went around twice.  It was starting to get dark and I had to get to a meeting, so after checking one more time I headed home.

On my drive home at 5:30 pm, Lisa tweeted out “Found both falcons at BS for about 1 minute.  Then lost the male.”  (5:10 pm)  I had just missed seeing all three Rochester Falcons, but between all the Watchers, all three were seen.  Always wonderful news!  🙂

Tonight snow is in the forecast for Rochester.  Only a trace to an inch, so not too much.  We’ve been very lucky so far.

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of the Rochester  Library that was under investigation by the Ghost Hunters.  Is it haunted?  You be the judge.

BE SURE TO CLICK ON A PIC FOR A LARGER VERSION.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2012 at 12:11 AM 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.