Morning/afternoon watch 3-23-13
By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK
It was 30 (F) -1 (C) clear and a bit breezy this morning when I started my watch. Eventually spring will arrive here in western New York!
As I came back to the Broad St. Bridge(BSB) after checking the east side I found Beauty on the base of Mercury-a different place for her to start out first thing. I drove down to the hole to see the front of her and then she flew over to the top ibeam south corner of OCSR after a minute or so.
5 minutes later Beauty flew over to the Times Square building(TSB) and landed under the southeast wing. She was facing south so I parked in front of the Blue Cross Arena on Exchange St. to observe.
She stayed there for 45 minutes watching for Dot.Ca(DC)to come a calling as the Brighton Site(BS) is that direction. At 8:00am Beauty flew down to her nest box and DC flew in landing under the northeast wing directly above the nest box.
I went over to the parking lot between the Wilder and Philipone buildings and parked by He’s Chinese resturant. Less than a minute later he was off on his first swoop session of the day.
DC swooped on Beauty who was making all kinds of noise in the nest box about a dozen times and then returned to the northeast wing ledge. He took a 20 minute break then he flew off making a half hearted attempt at catching a starling,broke it off quick and flew up under the southeast wing.
<Northeast wing -Southeast wing> 
Around this time Larry was up on the BSB watching. DC spent the next hour and a half up there in a relaxed state mostly looking down at the nest box. He did a little preening,stretched out his wings a couple times,scratched at his head and picked at his talons here and there. At 9:45am DC flew off and started swooping at Beauty in the nest box.
Again DC swooped a dozen or so times and went back under the southeast wing. 10 minutes later Beauty shot out of the nest box and DC was on her in an instant as they both flew east toward the river. It all happened so fast I couldn’t get out of my car in time to see where they went after they flew over the Philipone building.
DC chasing after Beauty
I drove up on the BSB to have a look around and found my dear friend and veteran watcher Dan sitting in his lawn chair on the south side of the bridge. I found a parking spot and joined him asking if he saw where Beauty and DC went. He said he had just gotten there and didn’t see anything yet so I got him up to speed on what’s been going on here this past week. When we finally get warmed up around here Dan will be my early morning watch buddy as he will come down at sunrise too. Within 5 minutes we spotted Beauty and DC as he was chasing her back and forth over the river to the north past OCSR. At one point Beauty inverted herself,talons up but they never made contact. As a matter of fact, we never saw any contact although they did dive on each other from time to time. We lost them to the far north past high falls for over 30 minutes and then they came barreling in from the east . Beauty landed on the top ibeam southeast side of OCSR while DC buzzed her a couple times and went to the TSB landing under the southeast wing.
Clearly she didn’t look like she was enjoying herself! 
Beauty took off flying directly over to DC who took flight as she approached and then she chased him behind the TSB to the west out of view. A couple minutes later they returned with the Beautyful one landing on the south corner top ibeam of OCSR. DC swooped on her 2 or 3 times before flying west out of sight. 10 minutes later around 11:15am, Beauty flew to the base of Mercury and started munching on cached food.
I left Dan and Beauty 10 minutes later to see if DC had gone to the Brighton site(BS). I found Pigott at home on the southeast corner above the south side vent and she was looking north which would in the direction of downtown.
She flew to the west vocalizing and came back to the east end coming to rest under the tree on the southeast corner.
Just before noon Miss Pigott flew off to the north and didn’t return so I stayed at BS as CarolP had downtown covered at this point. The next sighting I had was when KathyO showed up to join me half hour later. We chatted for a bit and just as I was about to get ready to end my watch we saw 3 raptors above the east end of the building as we were parked in the parking lot on that side of the building. One was a large hawk and the other 2 were Peregrines. The larger of the 2 was squawking up a storm as it thumped the hawk once while the other stayed back. They chased it out of the territory and the male who was none other than DC landed under the tree on the southeast corner.
Pigott was the other falcon and she flew to the west side of the building. Kathy rode over and found her on the northwest corner near the broken window that we believe was their scrape last year. I went over to say my goodbyes to Kathy leaving her to cover the site, therefore ending my watch at about 12:50am. Today it seemed that DC was more interested in harassing Beauty in flight rather than stalk her at the nest box which is not exactly courtship behavior. However, he continues to treat Pigott like a mate. Keep smiling everyone! 🙂
Below I have provided links for more pics and videos from the day
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWrZvA
http://youtu.be/fTbXMRcaNjA
http://youtu.be/79JVVPyUIkQ
http://youtu.be/7r45pyVOEEQ
http://youtu.be/bxCXmNowICw
http://youtu.be/_Xd0knvj-UE
http://youtu.be/dbJkeb1e6XM
