By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Todays weather changed on me very quickly as it was 41 (F) 5(C) when I left the house with a little wind and very light rain. An hour after I arrived downtown the wind started howling,the temperature dropped and the rain turned to moderate snow.

I began my watch at 6:30am on the Broad St. Bridge (BSB) finding no falcons anywhere in the vicinity. I drove to the east side and still found no falcons so I went back to the BSB to wait and watch. At about 6:50am Beauty showed up on the Mercury money bag which I am going to start referring to as MMB for ease of tweeting when I’m in the field.

Click on the pics for full version

Beauty and I would share space for the next 35 minutes as I was parked on Bank Place- the one way street that leads down to Aqueduct St.(the hole) from Exchange Blvd running west to east. It goes along the south side of the Philipone building running parallel with Broad St. to the south. Beauty looked above her a few times and I thought Dot.Ca had arrived but no he was staying late with Pigott today. When the weather turned ushering in a cold front Beauty who was having a little trouble holding on decided to fly over to the nest box to take cover.

Beauty and I waited another half hour or so for DC to show up and then I decided to go to the Brighton Site (BS) to look for him. As I passed the main entrance to the Blue Cross Arena I noticed some people camped out in front of it. One of our forum members Bobbie Ireland reported that the musical group Green Day was to play there, so these people obviously like them enough to endure the nasty weather conditions to get tickets.

I arrived at BS around 8:00am to find nobody was home or at least not where I could see or hear them. I hung out for half hour driving around the building periodically to check and finally I found Pigott on the east side ledge where the roof top tree grows.

Now I don’t know if she was up there the whole time back on the ledge out of sight or she could also have been in the cubby on the west side or in the broken window scrape on the west extension. She soon walked to the southeast corner and perched there.

I stayed just about 15 minutes more and after no luck finding DC after a trip around the place I left for downtown leaving Miss Pigott in a snow flurry. Rolling into downtown at 9:00am I spotted Beauty on the deck next to cam 4 so I drove down to the hole parking next to Keybank which is in the Wilder building. I observed from Basin St. a one way alley which runs east to west from Aqueduct St. out to Exchange Blvd. alongside the Wilder building.

Beauty hopped back into the nest box a couple minutes later. 5 minutes later I looked up to see a falcon fly thru from out front of the Times Square building (TSB) over the Philipone building headed east quickly leaving my field of vision. I drove up to the BSB to have a look around parking far enough out to see in the nest box. Nothing until 10 minutes later when Beauty flew up to the deck landing on the corner between the main cam and cam 4 with her back to me. At first I wasn’t sure if it was her until I spotted DC up above under the northeast wing toward the back of the ledge.

<Click it to see DC  

15 minutes later at just about 9:30am DC disappeared then reappeared in the same spot and he was eating something. I think it was cached food for he flew down to the deck with a small chunk in his talon. I could just barely see Beauty behind him and then he took off.

I don’t know if he gave his prize to Beauty or if he took it with him. Beauty ended up out by cam 4 and then went back into the nest box.

Beauty left a few minutes later and returned to the nest box with food.  DC turned up under the southeast wing and minutes later they both took off to the north.

I ended my watch at this time just before 10:00am.

Just some thoughts from what I’ve observed since DC came back from migration. The first week was spent swooping on Beauty either in the air or at the nest box. Last week was spent mating and taking food from downtown to Pigott at BS. The last couple days Beauty and DC have been playing games with food and he has finally bowed to her in the nest box with some echupping. A slow progression compared to what has taken place at BS with Miss Pigott whom we have never seen him swoop. There has been much bowing, echupping and mating since his return with Pigott which is normal Peregrine behavior. And so we continue to learn together as we await the arrival of eggs. Keep smiling! 🙂

Click the links below to view videos from my watch

http://youtu.be/xyJSkNO4omc
http://youtu.be/g26-UOnsVs4
http://youtu.be/gB9twsKPn38
http://youtu.be/tu41JVeK61U

This entry was posted on Monday, April 1st, 2013 at 3:31 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.