By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

This mornings weather was overcast with a starting temperature of 60 (F) 16 (C)

As Donna and I arrived on the Broad St. Bridge we could see a juvie on the base of Mercury but the parking was all full as the Jehovahs Witnesses were in town. We ended up in Aqueduct Park where we could see the juvie. Dot.Ca (DC) flew past his offspring which prompted it to start sceaming at dear old dad. DC continued on to land on the 3rd ibeam south corner of OCSR.

I was able to see the red tape on this juvies right leg band telling me that it was Nor’Easter.

I spotted Dana on the Broad St. Bridge with her long lens-after a bit she started looking down in the river by the RG&E substation. I couldn’t see what she was taking pics of so I took a couple random shots. She came over to join Donna and I in the park and told us of a duckling a Black-crowned Night Heron had eaten. Well come to find out one of the pics I took had the heron in it but he was just standing there -no duckling.

Dana also said there was a juvie up on the Wilder building. I spotted a juvie on the northwest corner  of the Granite building, but it left soon after.I was able to get a shot of it thru the trees in the park.

Then we saw one under the northeast wing of the Times Square building-it eventually flre off to the north. Beauty was on the top ibeam south corner of OCSR amd Nor’E was getting restless.

He left so we went up to the hole where Brian met up with us to watch the Wilder bird.

Pretty sure this was Mercury on the east side roof of the Wilder building. His brother Nor’E was back on the base of Mercury.

We had to get going as Donna had to return to New Jersey after her week long stay in our fair city-we checked Frontier Communications Tower and Kodak Office on our way out of downtown.

We found DC on the northwest corner of the launchpad to send Donna off with a smile! 🙂

Click on the links below to view a couple videos from todays watch

http://youtu.be/ajgDuXW-FXM

http://youtu.be/YARmmTzN0bg

By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Todays starting temperature was 54 (F) 12 (C) with sunny blue skies

Unfortunately the program we use for our reports, WordPress isn’t letting me post pictures tonight so you’ll have to check out my photo album at the end of this abbreviated report. Sorry it’s so short but it’s late and my bed is calling me.

Donna and I watched our Rochester juvies do a little flying today but it was mostly about eating. As we arrived on the Broad St. bridge  Nettie was on the nest box roof and then she went over to the well wall parapet then out to the north end of the wall.The highlights of the watch were Beauty being chased by Tesh,Nor’Easter and Mercury. Tesh flying off Times Square and thumping on a gull twice, making it scream and a food drop by Dot.Ca (DC) on the base of Mercury in which the 3 juvies shared as Nettie watched from across the way on Times Square. Everyone dispersed and disappeared after eating and so did we from our morning session.

As we arrived at Seneca Towers, Veteran was on the northwest corner. Our night time watch was quiet with very little activity after they had eaten a meal. Kathy,Donna,Carol,Joyce,Jeanne,Dick,Brian and myself were on watch this evening. Many smiles crossed our faces while together tonight as per usual! 🙂

Click on the links below to see my pics and videos from todays watches

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqjwG

http://youtu.be/_5CSzfRNY-8

http://youtu.be/MKHi9D02mjU

By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

Could two watches have been any different than today and yesterday’s watches?  Yesterday, there was very little activity until after 7:00 pm.  The evening (7/16) ended with a most awesome display of flying and talon tagging by three of our four juvies.  When you’re watching it in person, it just takes your breath away.  How do they do some of those moves?  It just seems impossible.  I do believe that Nettie is lying low while she recovers from whatever injury she received over the weekend.  But, we have seen her flying well and interacting with her family.  I think she just needs time and that’s ok.

Wednesday – 7/16/14 Pictures – Watchers:  Donna, MAK, Lisa McK, Joyce, Brian, Dan, Kris G, Bill, Nancy, Ed and me Carol P.

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Here is a video I took of the three juvies flying together above the Xerox Tower.  Just click on the following link.

http://youtu.be/Gp4az1-XuSo

Thursday – 7/17/14 Pictures – Watchers:  Joyce, Dana, Carrie, Shaky, Dan and two young friends, and me Carol P.

Tonight was a whole different fledge watch.  We saw 3 food transfers and a food delivery to the nest box for Nor’easter.  The first two food transfers were successful, but the 3rd was dropped by, we believe, Mercury.  To be fair, he was the first to fly up to Beauty who came in with a pigeon.  He flipped up and attempted to take the large prey, but missed.  Beauty continued to the base of Mercury (the statue) and landed next to Nettie.  That’s when Beauty was mugged by two of the juvies that flew in and landed on her and next to her.  A tug-0-war started, and the prey fell to the roof below.  Beauty was able to retrieve it and took it away.

Dot.ca brought in food to the nest box just as it was getting dark and Nor’easter was the happy tiercel who got this evening meal.  It was a fun watch tonight with lots of flying and food transfers.  All 6 Rochester Falcons were seen during my watch.  All are doing very well and the juvies continue to hang out with each other.

Here are some pictures from this afternoon/evening.  Enjoy! and Goodnight!

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One of three Black-Crowned Night Herons we saw last night.

By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK
Today was a different kind of falcon watch-Joyce picked Donna and I up and we dove off to Syracuse,NY about 80 miles east of Rochester where our old friend Pigott has a nest site, offspring (successfully fledged) female named Barb and an unanded mate. They reside on the State Tower building. We were lucky enough to see Barb on City Hall across the way from the nest building eating a small snack.

We took a break at a local pub while it rained and when we came back out and took a drive around we spotted Pigott and Barb flying between 2 buildings and disappearing a split second later. That was all the falcon activity we had for the morning/afternoon.

I must say I am so happy that Pigott has filled her life with a family-she sure is in a totally different environment from when she was in Rochester. From almost rural surroundings to a true city bird-my heart grew from this experience today even though we only saw Miss Pigott for a second or two.

We came home and had intentions of going downtown to see our juvies but Luzerne and Veteran were hanging out and flying back and forth in front of Donna and I from the west side balcony and we just couldn’t tear ourselves away from our eye level encounters with these 2. Many passings at no more than 20 feet away they had food and there was vocalizing and a stoop down into the gorge tree tops by Veteran that was pretty great to see. Imagine, we’re used to looking up at them and from my 16th floor Seneca Towers apartment building we watched the stoop below us. Wild stuff!! I got one pic of Luzerne as she was coming right at us with the sun behind her making it a silhouette shot.

We never made it downtown but we were smiling never the less! 🙂

One video link below of Barb eating-click it and view

http://youtu.be/8CBWp-4e_cM

By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

It was a nice morning for a watch with a starting temperature of 59 (F) 16 (C) and bright blue sunny skies with a few clouds

Click on all my pics to see the full version

Donna and I didn’t find any falcons after checking around downtown so we went to the Pont De Rennes pedestrian bridge at High Falls where Dan was settled on a bench. Beauty was on the southeast cube of the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT), Dot.Ca (DC) was on the southeast corner of the Kodak Office (KO) launchpad and 2 juvies were flying around the KO tower. One of the juvies landed on what Dan named the High ball of the 18th floor on KO.

Dan left after DC flew north so far that he disappeared into the horizon. Donna and I met up with DebbieH on Fitzhugh St. below Widows Walk (WW) where we had Tesh on the northwest corner with food and another juvie on the northeast corner. Eventually all 4 juvies were on WW but Tesh was the only one that ate as she was hogging it all. In time the other 3 left Tesh to it and scattered.

After they all flew off  WW we took a ride and found the Beautyful one on the jail tower 3rd arm down and a juvie was on the west side of the Hall of Justice roof.

Next we were back to WW and had 3 juvies there on the east and north side rails-one by one they flew off with 2 of them playing talon tag and vanishing behind buildings to the north.

Later on I spotted a juvie on the northeast corner of City Place playing peekaboo-we drove up to the roof of the Sister Cities parking garage for a closer view and to look for the other 5 downtown falcons.

We left as there was quiet in the kingdom, to take our afternoon break only to return later in the evening. Lisa and Carol were on watch as we met in the hole. Things were quiet at first with 1 juvie under the southeast wing of Times Square, then 2 more joined it under the wing. More watchers started filtering in-Dan, Nick, Nancy, Kris, Bill and Joyce joined the watch. We all ended up going to the Broad St. bridge to watch the 3 juvies sky dance above Xerox, putting on quite an aerial display.

I taped a 4 minute video of the high flying instead of taking pics as the distance was too far for it. After the juvies finished and flew to the Times Square building under the southeast wing and fledge ledge I spotted a Black-crowned Heron in the river. Carol found one on a log and I saw a 3rd one on a rock-2 of them flew up river to the south.

After a great evening watch we all left at 9pm with smiling faces! 🙂

PS-Donna and I are going to Syracuse tomorrow with Joyce to see Pigott and her new digs so there will be no morning watch

Click on the links below to view more pics and videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqjv-

http://youtu.be/ge7bMw0amLM

http://youtu.be/4u7WBuIz0Fo

http://youtu.be/MyEp_-PvgUs

http://youtu.be/k1dYh9pfmuw

http://youtu.be/ImO4d-wmkOo

By Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

I have been so busy over the last few days.  Juvie falcons to keep a close eye on and a most wonderful gathering of folks here in Rochester this past weekend for the annual Rochester Falcon Watch Weekend.

Nettie is again flying high with her brothers and sister after a scare on Saturday/Sunday.  We are all relieved that there was nothing seriously wrong with her left wing.  Whew!

The highlight of today’s late afternoon/evening watch?  One of the juvie males, not sure if it was Mercury or Nor’easter, chased a flock of about 20 sparrows!  We were all quite amazed by this attempt to hunt.  🙂

I am pretty sure that all 4 juvies visited the nest box during the day and evening.  I love when the folks watching the Rfalconcam Cameras are able to see them!

The fledge watch continues.  If you get a chance to stop downtown, this is your chance to see  how Nettie, Tesh, Mercury and Nor’easter are doing with their falcon lessons from Beauty and Dot.ca.

I’ll leave you with some pictures I’ve taken over the last few days.  Enjoy and goodnight!

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By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

67 (F) 19 (C) with rain and fog to start, lots of humidity then when it cleared up later in the day it was marvelous

Click on my pics to view the full version

Donna and I had quite the time keeping up with our falcon family when they got going today. There was plenty of high flying and fun on all our parts. There were some wet falcons but when the rain stopped the action kicked in. All 6 falcons were seen today.

Our 4 fledgling falcons made use of the Frontier Communications Tower, jail tower, Widows Walk, Mercury, Democrat & Chronicle, Crossroads and Times Square buildings. Talon tagging, chasing sparrows and bug catchers. We saw a fantastically fast chase after a Turkey Vulture from Dot.Ca (DC) and some great maneuvering in the air. 2 juvies locked talons over the parking lot next to the Times Square building,  I believe one of them had food.

Lisa and DebbieH reported 3 juvies on the roof of the Democrat & Chronicle eating  a big meal of pigeon as a 4th juvie was on the base of Mercury having a snack as well.

Donna and I took a break and on the way to my apartment at Seneca Towers I spotted Veteran on the northwest corner of the building-this was the first sighting for Donna of either of the ST pair.

Upon returning downtown in the evening, there was just a lot of flying going on with a lot  of watchers watching. The list of those present tonight-Donna,Joyce,Carol, Lisa,Dana,Brian,Dick,Jeanne,Shaky,Carrie,CarlaP and myself.

We always smile when sharing space with our Rochester Peregrine Falcons! 🙂

Click on the links below to view more pics and a couple videos

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqjvc

http://youtu.be/CG35YkhPY4k

http://youtu.be/J4XJdVRPtcc

By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The starting temperature 6am when Donna and I arrived downtown for our watch was 65 (F) 16 (C) with cloudy conditions in the morning. Later on the sun made appearances on and off

Click on my pics to see the full version

Donna and I found Beauty and 2 juvies on the east side rail of Widows Walk (WW) -we hoped one of them was Nettie as she left the Telesca building before we got downtown. We had issues most of the day IDing the falcons because of the dark conditions and this was one of those times.

We worked very hard to find Nettie and the rest of the clan-driving here and there, including up to the top of the Sister Cities parking garage to view the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT). We found Beauty and a juvie on FCT and a falcon on the playpen of Kodak Office and 2 juvies on Widows Walk (WW) but couldn’t ID any of them. We went to the Pont De Rennes pedestrian Bridge at High Falls and found Dan and a friend of his visiting from Florida, Mary.We saw a good looking young buck.

We left there to continue on our search for Nettie-I dropped Donna off in the hole and set out in the car to look around. Donna had 2 juvies on WW and one falcon on OCSR while I had a juvie on the small Frontier tower, Beauty on the platform railing and a falcon on the top arm of FCT. That’s a total of 6 falcons at the same time which meant Nettie was out and about flying.

I rejoined Donna in the hole as we watched Mercury eat on the top ibeam of OCSR while Beauty watched from the south corner.

Beauty finished off the food after Mercury got his fill-they left and so did we to the FCT where we had a juvie on one of the arms, DC on another and before breaking for awhile we saw Beauty on OCSR. The kids were out of sight and most likely sleeping.

When we returned at 4pm we found 2 juvies on FCT and Tesh was on WW with a falcon flying above her very high in the sky. Beauty and DC were on the west and south corners top ibeam of OCSR when a man appeared on the roof causing the Beautyful one to fly off followed by DC.

There was some fancy flying with up to 4 falcons jutting in and out of view around the Times Square, OCSR vicinity and at around 4:30pm we finally could ID Nettie on the Crossroads building as SusanC  joined the watch. Beauty watched from TSB and DC from the Mercury money bag.

Susan left and joined Dan at High Falls and over the next couple hours Carol,Joyce,Brian,Larry and Jeanne came to watch with us. We had some sporadic flying and 3 juvies on WW-we just needed one more. Donna and I ended our watch after Joyce found Nettie on the southwest corner of WW joining her siblings. We left smiling after a successful fledge watch! 🙂

Click on the links below to see more pics and videos
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqju6

http://youtu.be/CV7QACedhC4

http://youtu.be/OazmiLlSft4

http://youtu.be/JE2HGs6KayI

http://youtu.be/MdDAL4fwb8A

http://youtu.be/RbD0T4onVjw

http://youtu.be/f_xGZKHMyR4

By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

Today started out rainy and humid with a temperature of 72 (F) 22 (C) and clearing up in the afternoon/evening

Click on my pics to see the full version

We continued monitoring Nettie on the Thomson Reuters building after she was found there last night by Bob from New Hampshire. Donna and I arrived in the hole about 7:15am-Lisa,Carol ,Dana,Eileen,and Larry were there. Ken and Nancy joined us and after they left Paul Hamilton came by. There was a juvie on one of the Widows Walk building chimneys with food that Beauty wanted to take but this child of  hers wouldn’t oblige her. After many attempts to take it-flying off and returning, Beauty gave up and went to the base of Mercury.

Joyce joined the watch followed by Brian as we all spent our day in the hole watching over Nettie who seemed to be alert, walking fine and stretching her wings out evenly. The other juvies flitted in and out a little landing on Widows Walk,Reynolds Arcade and Times Square at different times.

The watchers took breaks at different times and when Donna and I returned from our afternoon break Carla was there and later Jeanne, Dana,Lou,Dan and 3 of his friends joined the watch. Donna and I went to check around for other falcons finding Mercury on the east side rail of Mercury the statue.

Just as we were returning Nettie flew from Thomson Reuters-we believe because a couple people went out on the roof for a moment. She ended up on the Democrat & Chronicle building across from Times Square. Beauty flew in and landed on the Times Square building on a small southeast ledge across from Nettie.

Nettie didn’t seem comfortable there so after a few minutes she took off and made a smooth, deliberate but slow fight to the Telesca building roof on the other side of Times Square. Tesh and the boys made an appearance on Widows Walk giving us a view of all 4 juvies at once before they all flew off.

It was another eventful fledge watch as Nettie showed us that she can fly with no issues-making all of us watchers near and far smile! 🙂

To view more pics and videos click on the links below

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN3DFm0ZMWqjuY

http://youtu.be/0sdSK9mVffo

http://youtu.be/a8H25EgiJHM

http://youtu.be/dWizYgTQ3Cs

By Rochester Falcon Watcher MAK

The starting temperature for our 1st Watchers Weekend morning was 61 (F) 16 (C) with abundant sunshine throughout the day

We had a total of 35 watchers come out to watch our young fledglings-if you would like to know who you can refer to my tweets from yesterday where I listed them all by name as they arrived. You can find them under Falcon Watches-Twitter. Sorry, no time for a detailed report.

Genesee Valley Audubon Society president June Summers presented Shaky with an appreciation gift for all his work to keep our cams up and running-it was a laptop carrier bag. We had a Black-crowned Night Heron in the tree by the Broad St. Bridge and our turtle was up on the rocks along with a Great Blue Heron to keep us occupied while we waited for our falcons to get into action.

We had lots of long distance flying by our young fledglings and a lot of down time. They were seen all over the downtown area and the highlight of the morning was Beauty thumping on and chasing a Bald Eagle out of the area. In the afternoon Nor’Easter, Mercury and Tesh had a siesta on the Frontier Communications Tower (FCT).

The evening featured Nettie on the Thomson Reuters building-the fact that she never left her spot to join her siblings leads us to believe that she may have a problem-she is still there as I write this report at 6am Sunday morning.

We  will be keeping a close eye on Nettie. It was a fun filled day getting together with everyone with lots of smiling going on! 🙂