By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The start of my day was chilly at 30 degrees (F) -1 (C)  but not much wind to speak of and when the sun came up there were no clouds for it to fight through to shine down.

I arrived downtown at 6:45am and found Beauty on the southeast corner of HSBC.

She was facing me as I parked on Broad St. in the back of the building (east side) but she was watching the southern skyline. Waiting and watching for Dot.Ca(DC) to make an appearance. 15 minutes later Beauty flew off to the west toward the Times Square building(TSB).

I thought for sure I would find DC when I got there but he wasn’t present. Instead, Beauty was under the southeast wing and as I crossed the Broad St. Bridge(BSB) I saw Dan in his lawn chair on the south side of the bridge. I made a u-turn and joined Dan to watch Beauty. It was just a little too chilly to sit in lawn chairs on the BSB so after half hour or so I got in my car to warm up. Dan said he was leaving soon so I went down to Exchange Blvd. in front of the Blue Cross Arena to wait with Beauty for DC.

Larry had seen Dan just before he left and came by to chat with me for a minute before leaving himself. In the meantime, Beauty was doing a lot of stretching up under that wing-probably to get ready for another day of flying around the city at blazing speeds with DC on her tail.

DC was quite late to show up this morning compared to the rest of the week. At 8:37am Dana tweeted  from the Brighton location that she saw a falcon fly from there to the north, which is in the direction of downtown. It took him all of 2 minutes to fly the distance of just under 3 miles. Beauty flew down to the nest box screaming as he approached. He flew in front of the Times Square building to show her that he had arrived. DC then flew up under the northeast wing of the TSB.

DC watched from above as Beauty called out to him from in the nest box. He would take his time preening and picking at his blood stained feet before flying off for the first swooping session of the day some 40 minutes after arriving.

It was a very short 2 swoop affair and then up under the northeast wing again. Donna texted me that she was on the livestream chat and  MarkB, an attorney that works on the 10th floor of the TSB had said any watchers that were out could  go up to his office to watch. Of course I said yes and tweeted Dana to ask her(she declined) as she was the only other watcher out and about at the time. I found that the view to the east was terrific but to the north and south quite limited because of the columns on the building that were on either side of the window.I actually set up in the empty office next to Marks.

<Front of Times Square looking up Always click on my pics for the full version

I didn’t see any action for about 35 minutes and then Beauty flew out over the Philipone building across the street and DC flew after her chasing her back to the nest box. Soon after she was off again flying north past  OCSR. A few minutes later I caught a glimpse of a falcon flying high above the Court St. bridge and out of sight to the south. I watched Beauty and DC tear up the sky with their after burners kicked in making it nearly impossible to get them in focus and that’s if I could even get them on cam. I surely enjoyed the show as a couple times they flew right at me and up above to where I couldn’t see them. Most of the time it was DC pursuing Beauty diving on her here and there but Beauty did chase him at times.

Just before I had to leave, as Mark had to get going, Beauty flew to the south corner of OCSR 2nd ibeam down-DC buzzed her as he flew by and then he went over to Mercury and landed on the money bag hand. I thanked him for the opportunity and went to the parking lot by He’s Chinese to watch Beauty and DC for a couple minutes before ending my watch at 11:15am. What a fantastic time I had watching from a birds eye view putting a big old smile on my face! 🙂

Click on the links below to view my photo album and some videos from todays watch

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWrZ-A

http://youtu.be/WfpPhH55qH8
http://youtu.be/UMh6s38Tl_0
http://youtu.be/oYHEdRlPdw4
http://youtu.be/Kn4mliIC_Vg
http://youtu.be/VWh68qp67BQ
http://youtu.be/_kh5BYMiwSU

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 24th, 2013 at 3:49 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.