By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Well I got up today and didn’t see any snow on the ground or in the air so I thought I might actually get in a watch without it. Wrong-after I got downtown it started out light and by the end it was snowing pretty darn good. The temperature was 31 (F) -1 (C).

I spent the first 20 minutes of my watch looking for Beauty and checking the Lake Tower site. As I sat on the Broad St. Bridge facing east looking toward Xerox I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked to my left and spotted Beauty flying from the northeast over the Granite building passing in front of  the Chase tower and then like she was shot out of a cannon turned toward me and the pigeons that were on the Blue Cross Arena. She streaked over the bridge and before I could turn around to look she disappeared to the south. I have to tell you that nothing else in my life has gotten my blood pumping faster than seeing a Peregrine Falcon turn on the speed in flight. WOW!

When I was on the east side I stepped out of my car to stand below Xerox, our tallest downtown building to give you a feel for what I saw. It’s really cool to look up from the bottom of these tall buildings.

15 minutes later after a ride around to the usual spots I found the Beautyful one on the main cam.

Beauty remained there for the next 50 minutes and flew off when I wasn’t looking. When I couldn’t locate her I went and checked the Lake Tower and Brighton sites to no avail. As I was leaving Brighton I got a text from Donna (one of our cam watchers) that there was a falcon alarm calling near the nest box so I went straight away to the Times Square building. As I approached I could see Beauty under the southeast wing. I went to the parking lot near He’s Chinese food and took a look around the surrounding area but didn’t see any other falcons.

Beauty looked perfectly calm as she did a little preening so she may have been yelling at a hawk or crow. The hormones are telling her to guard that nest box now as the new season is about to start. Now we just need some males for our 3 females. At 9:00am Beauty dropped off the back of the ledge and flew west out of view. 20 minutes later I found Beauty on the top ibeam southeast side of OCSR. The snow started to pick up at this point after starting out very light.

I spent the next hour watching Beauty thru the snow as she preened and slept with one eye open. I ended my watch around 10:30am with a smiling face! 🙂

I have links for some videos of Beauty below and all you need do is click and view

http://youtu.be/tzXrQwTWoO8

http://youtu.be/E1RuvDfeSRk

http://youtu.be/LU6BaznsBK4

http://youtu.be/NDelhLxao0Q
http://youtu.be/WUmx_TxvFWY

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2013 at 4:48 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.