By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Brr, winter is back with a vengeance today! It was 18 cold degrees (F) -8 (C) when I left for my watch with a bitter wind. And it snowed on and off in varying degrees of intensity.

Upon arriving on the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) it was a great way to start my day when I spotted UT (unbanded tiercel) on the Thomson Reuters building. He was on a top floor  river side window ledge.

He kept half sleeping as he would close his right eye and keep his left eye on his surroundings.

True to form he didn’t stay long-flying off after 10 minutes going northwest.  UT would double back and go to the nest box. I wasn’t able to locate Beauty in the first hour of my watch but I was told that she had been in the nest box with UT minutes before I arrived downtown for my watch. I left to check the Brighton site (BS) confident that Beauty was ok and just hiding from UT and I. After seeing the unidentified male at BS yesterday with Pigott, I planned to go there earlier than usual. I found Miss Pigott on the west end of the south side vent.

I took a drive around to see if there was any other PEFA but could see none. I spent an hour with Pigott in the snow and wind barely able to see her at times. She preened,napped,pooped and looked over her territory for a meal.

I left for downtown determined to find Beauty at 9:10am. From the BSB I spotted a falcon high above Xerox and followed it as it flew north over the Hyatt before turning west and crossing the river. I lost sight of it when it flew behind the Crossroads building. I drove over that way but didn’t find it so I returned to the BSB finding Beauty on the top ibeam southeast side of OCSR.

I drove to Graves St. but there was nowhere to park so I stopped and took a pic, then I went over by the Radisson to observe.

Beauty had her back to me from there so I drove to the hole (Aqueduct St.) to finish up with my watch. The Beautyful one did a little preening and a little napping in the half hour I shared space with her.

I don’t know where UT was but I had seen him earlier so I knew he was ok as I ended my watch at 10:00am.  I wouldn’t be done looking for falcons for the day though. At 1:05pm as I had just started writing my morning watch report I got a text message from KrisG saying that MarkB, who works in the Times Square building had reported a PEFA fight over the river on the livestream chat. I told her I’d go downtown and check on Beauty and UT.

Half hour or so after looking everywhere I spotted UT fly up to the nest box-one down and one to go. Another couple trips around downtown failed to locate Beauty so I went back to the BSB and waited. Thankfully, Beauty came flying in from the east and landed on the top ibeam southeast side of OCSR. I went to Graves St. for closer viewing and within a couple minutes she turned from showing her back to showing her front as UT came flying in to attempt to mate with her. Nobody has witnessed him giving her a food gift yet(doesn’t mean he hasn’t) but I’m thinking perhaps she isn’t going to mate with him until he can show her that he can provide for a family. Time will tell as we shall have to be patient to see what happens. I saw all 3 current Rochester Peregrine Falcons today which in itself is enough to make me smile, but I was also happy nobody was injured in the battle that occurred earlier! 🙂

Click the links below to view 3 videos from my watch this morning

http://youtu.be/2cHDkT_mF6M
http://youtu.be/ejzUv8wLR24
http://youtu.be/PQ4DDQGuTJw

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 14th, 2013 at 4:58 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.