By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

As I left for my watch this morning I wondered how the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) would look after the snow removal efforts yesterday. Arriving on the BSB at 7:15am I was very impressed with the result-dry sidewalks and barely a trace of snow. As I sat there in the now cleared from snow parking lane, a city worker came by in his mini motorized salt dispenser/plow and left a path of it on the sidewalk. Right after he made his way past the Thomson Reuters building I was distracted by the flash of the Aqueduct pigeons. They were coming up out of their night time roost from under the bridge-fast and just high enough to clear the bridge and back down between the BSB and Court St. bridge – then up –  either going south with Beauty chasing them or over to the Blue Cross Arena to roost which means she isn’t in the vicinity. This is how they start each day whether Beauty is on their tail depends on which route they take! On this day the Rock Doves went south and that was all I saw of Beauty today- a flash to the southern morning sky right behind her prey dipping and darting .  I took my usual trip around the city to look for the Beautyful one and when I came back up on the BSB I spotted a falcon watcher named Pat walking down the sidewalk. I yelled out to her and we chatted briefly before she continued on to work in the Thomson Reuters building. I did another Beauty check and left for the Brighton Site (BS).  I found BST to be home perched on a south facing window ledge on the east extension.

No napping for this boy today-he was all about preening his beautiful feathers. I was just about to pull away to look for Pigott when a car pulled up behind me and a man got out and signaled to me. He came up to my window and asked if there were any falcons around. I said yes as a matter of fact and showed him where BST was located. I introduced myself and asked who he was-he said Ted from Harrisburg,PA and then his friend Lynn was introduced to me. Turns out they were at BS yesterday as well with a local forum member nanguz. They took a couple pics and left so I took my ride around the complex with no luck finding Pigott. I stayed a couple hours with BST as he mostly preened and looked over his shoulder.

I never heard him make a peep so I’m calling that last pic a yawn.  lol  I did check all the trees in the area as well as the building a few times while I was there but no Miss Pigott. I look forward to seeing one of them in a tree one of these days as I’ve never seen a falcon on anything other than a building, pole or structure of some kind.  BST flew east without returning within 15 minutes and so I returned to downtown. I searched everywhere for Beauty more than once unsuccessfully. So after 4 hours I ended my watch at 11:30am and drove away smiling for having seen a fellow watcher, a Peregrine Falcon  and met some new falcon watching friends from Pennsylvania!  🙂

Just one link today for a video

http://youtu.be/Couqt-NJ4dY

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2013 at 3:55 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.