By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Very dreary, cloudy day with rain.  But there was lots of falcon activity for the Rochester Falcon Watchers on this rainy Saturday.

Texts From Today:

10:00 am – Carol P – “At KP. As usual no falcons. Raining now. Will check DT next.”

10:01 am – Larry O – ” at Brighton with Mak. So nice to see a pair of Falcons doing their thing.”

10:10 am – Carol P – “DT. Beauty on top IBEAM of the OCSR preening. Peaceful here. BS next.”

10:30 am – Carol P – “At BS. Again I just missed my fellow watchers. Oh well. Both Pigott and BST are quiet on the west side of the bldg. Happy to see all 3 again.”

11:10 am – Carol P – “BS. Kathy O here now. P flew NE & looped around to the back of the bldg. Now on the north side. Cant find BST now.”

11:40 am – Carol P – “At BS. No falcons now. Dana here now. Kathy O had to leave.”

12:10 pm – Carol P – ” BS. Dana found P in the trees behind BS. The crows didn’t like that and she decided to leave. Back on BS.”

1:00 pm – Carol P – “BS. P now preening on NE side of bldg. No sign of BST. Starting to rain again. Dana and I leaving BS now.”

2:10 pm – Jeanne – “Falcon just flew past Xerox and Chase.”

2:38 pm – Ei on Rfalconcam Now – “Beauty on Mercury again.” – As seen from Camera #1

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My Falcon Watch started at KP.  I arrived there at 10:00 am.  As usual, I could not find any falcons.  I will continue to check out this area throughout the winter.

My next stop was downtown Rochester.  MAK & Larry had tweeted that there was a lot of activity over at the BS location, but first I had to check on Beauty.  At 10:10 am I was parked on the Andrews St Bridge and from there, I could see Beauty on the OCSR top Ibeam at the far west end.  She was preening and all was quiet downtown, so I decided to head out to the BS location to see what Pigott & BST were up to and to meet up with my fellow Watchers.

I arrived at the BS location to find that I was on my own, at least for a short time.  I found Pigott up on the NW corner of the building and BST below her on a windowsill.

BST took off soon after I took this picture and I did not seen him again f0r the rest of my watch.  Kathy O joined me and we chatted while we kept an eye  on Pigott.  We kept looking for BST, but we couldn’t find him.  Pigott took off heading NE and we lost her behind the tree line.  She swung right and circled around to the south.  We found her on the back of the building (south side).  At 11:40 am, Kathy had to leave and Dana joined me.  That’s when Pigott took off.  Dana and I split up and covered different sides of the building.

At noon, Dana found what she thought was a falcon in the trees behind the building on the south side.  At first we thought it had to be a Red-tail Hawk, but after getting a little closer, we verified it was indeed a Peregrine Falcon name Pigott.  Usually these trees would fill up with Crows at the end of the day.  At first she was all by herself, just looking around, probably in hunt mode.  A few Crows came in and landed in the tree below her, cawing loudly.  They were not very happy having a falcon in their tree.  Dana and I were amazed as Crows started to  stream in from the west and landed in Pigott’s tree and all around her.  CAWING & RATTLING filled the air.

The Crows became bolder and bolder, physically hitting her and landing right next to her.  They wanted her out, but Pigott wasn’t moving.  As I watched, I could see her lunge at the closer Crows and she turned herself around.  Now she was facing me and she still didn’t want to leave her tree.  Finally, at 12:10 pm, after showing those Crows who was boss, she spread her wings and took off, heading back towards her building.  Dana and I followed her.  Pigott flew around to the north side of the building and that’s where Dana and I left her at 1:00 pm.

Some of you are probably saying, “Oh, sure Pigott had a stand off with a mob of Crows”.  Well it’s all true and here’s the proof.  I just happened to catch it all in a video.  Just click on the link below.  Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/NjHGcpppsSU

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2012 at 8:43 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.