By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Having gotten 3 in. of snow overnite I did some snow clearing before heading out for my watch on a crisp 12 degree fahrenheit morning. The sky was pretty light on my way downtown so I knew we’d have a nice sunrise.

Twas a slow start falcon wise as I never saw Beauty until just before 8:00am some 45 minutes into my watch. I was parked on the Andrews St. bridge when the pigeons that hang out on the top of the Radisson Hotel scattered into fright flight. Beauty came flying from the east and proceeded to chase them toward me as they all were dipping and diving, zigging and zagging back and forth over the river. They changed direction and shot straight upriver to the south past OCSR over the Broad St. and Court St. bridges where I lost them. Wow slow was done and action had taken over even tho it lasted probably all of half a minute it seemed like longer. I looked for Beauty as I made my way toward Cornhill on my way to Brighton(BS) to check that site without finding her. Just before 8:30am I arrived at BS and spotted BST our visiting winter unbanded tiercel(male) Peregrine Falcon being the first time all week that I had seen this endearing falcon.

He was on a south facing top window ledge on the east extension at the inside corner. At first BST was preening and I think he tired himself out cuz he soon got sleepy and started nodding off.

Pigott flew in after half hour and landed on the northeast corner of the east extension after flying above BST and checking him out.

She was looking especially lovely and light in the sweet sunshine as she preened and watched over her territory. She too got sleepy at one point while there. She also watched a plane fly overhead.

They both seemed pretty content to just bask in the sun for the 2 hours I spent with them. At about 10:15am Pigott spread her wings readying for flight and took off  to the east.

10 minutes later BST walked over to the corner of his window and discarded a feather that was obviously bugging him from cached food he had up there. He then jumped/flew to the window across from the one he was on,walked to the far corner of that ledge and tucked in for a nap.

Click pics for full version

I left him to it and and headed back downtown to find the Beautyful one. She made it easy for me as she was in the bright sunshine on the top ibeam southeast side of OCSR looking like she was lit up.

She took off 10 minutes later while I wasn’t watching thus ending my watch at 11:00am. All 3 current falcons seen sent me on my way smiling! 🙂

Links below for more pics and videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWrTtg

http://youtu.be/NvxG8KNhNDY
http://youtu.be/T4OBUQKxEa4
http://youtu.be/UVT4IGA7A98
http://youtu.be/Ud3heUjhDqs
http://youtu.be/gFzURkweAV8

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2013 at 4:38 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.