By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

It’s winter in Rochester and it lived up to it’s name today.  Snow all day long, making it very hard to find falcons!  But we did!

Here are my tweets from today:

11:50 pm – “DT. Checking out snowy downtown Rochester. No sign of Miss B yet. Very slick out here so be careful if you venture out.”

12:00 pm – “DT. With this snow its impossible to tell if B is in the elevator shaft or not.”

12:50 pm – “BS. Pigott still on SW corner. No sign of BST. and the snow continues…”

1:10 pm – “BS. P just took off heading south. Waiting to see if she returns.”

1:40 pm – “BS. RTH just flew thru landing in a tree NE of here. No pefas challenged but the Crows sure did!”

2:40 pm – “Back at BS with Kathy O. No falcons seen yet.” (Went looking for Pigott and found a Merlin eating on a telephone pole.)

2:50 pm – “BS. Pefa flew in and landed at east end.” (Larry and Harold joined Kathy and I.)

2:50 pm – “BS. I believe it is Pigott.”

3:50 pm – “Kathy O and I checked the DT area. No luck finding Beauty. With snow its impossible to see if she is in elevator shaft. Time to head home.”

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I started my watch downtown and attempted to find Beauty (11:50 am).  No luck.  I even looked up inside the elevator shaft, but because of the snow, it was impossible to see if she was up there.  The Ring-billed Gulls were very active in the snow.  Flying back and forth over the river.  Starlings too.  The Pigeons chose to huddle together for warmth on the roof tops.  The snowplows were plowing the sidewalks on the Broad St Bridge, but it was almost impossible to get to the sidewalk from the street due to all the snow piled up.  So lots of folks were forced to walk in the street until they could get to a spot where they could climb up onto the sidewalk.  Very dangerous, since the conditions were so slippery.  Brian told me that he had almost been hit yesterday evening by a guy driving and texting!

Here’s what I saw looking up into the OCSR elevator shaft.  Was Miss Beauty up there?  No way to know for sure.

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After checking all over the downtown area, I headed over to the BS location to see if I could find Pigott & BST (12:50 pm).  There was a few inches of snow on the roads, and they were slippery, but as long as you took it slow, you were ok. When I arrived at BS, I found Pigott up on the SW corner.  I drove around a couple times, but could not find BST anywhere, so I returned to where I had seen Pigott.  She had moved over to the other side of the extension, where I had seen both her and BST share a meal.

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At 1:10 pm, Pigott took off, heading south.  I remained at the BS location hoping she and maybe BST would return.  When she hadn’t returned, I decided to search for her in the direction she headed.  I found a falcon eating on a telephone pole.  At first I thought it might be a juvenile Peregrine.  It was snowing so hard, it was really hard to get a good look.  Kathy O found me and we both decided it was a Merlin, not a Peregrine.  First Merlin I’d seen in a long time.  The Merlin finished eating and took off, so Kathy and I decided to head back to the BS location.

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Very soon after we arrived, Pigott flew in, landing on the SE corner of the building (2:50 pm).  Larry O and Harold (his new dog) joined us for awhile.  We looked for BST, but again were unable to find him.  We remained for about an hour, before heading back downtown to see if we could find Beauty (3:50 pm).  Kathy and I searched while it continued to snow, but we could not find her.  I again checked up into the elevator shaft, but again it was too snowy to see if she was up there.

Beauty had been seen earlier today and Pigott is staying close to her building.  It was time to head home, but I would certainly be out again tomorrow to check on the Rochester Falcons.

I’ll leave you with some pictures I took during my Falcon Watch today.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2012 at 10:27 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.