From Rochester Falcon Watcher, Lou C.

Dana and I were asked to take banding day photos from on top of the First Federal building yesterday. Although the building is a bit too far away from a photographic standpoint (sort of like taking someone’s portrait from the other end of a football field), I couldn’t say ‘no’ to the opportunity because it afforded a unique view, looking downward into the falcon nestbox area, and would allow for some shots that offered a falcon’s view of the world. Cool! We got up there around 9:15 am. The wind was blowing and there was a large loud exhaust fan near the corner of the building where we had to shoot from so we had to scream at each other, but it still was a very enjoyable experience. We were joined by D&C staff photographer, Maria de Jesus. You may have already seen her pictures posted in the D&C, one of which included Dana. In addition there was a person from Channel 10 up on the roof with us.

One photographic challenge was to get my camera to focus on the flying falcons and not any of the objects behind them because we were shooting downward. I threw my camera into manual focus mode and used that for some of these shots. In other instances, I left the zoom pulled back to show a wider view. In addition, we only had one fly-by and when the falcon did come close, the camera wasn’t set to compensate for a strong backlight. I needed to do some Photoshopping to correct. I took advantage of the opportunity of being on top of the building by also taking some wide angle pictures of the surrounding area, looking north, south east, and west to view the city.

All in all, it turned out to be a beautiful day, especially since we topped off the experience with a trip to the Dinosaur Barbeque for lunch.

Attached is an album of pictures with this external view. It’s a day late, but better late than never! Click on my picture to view the album. Enjoy!

Lou

Lots of pictures and a couple of video clips from today’s banding of Callidora and Jemison:

http://birdblog.marchlords.com/2010/06/new-bangles-for-calli-jemma.html

Jim

Here are some pictures I took on Memorial Day while Beauty enjoyed a cooling drink.

Scouting some shady falcon watch spots.

From Rochester Falcon Watcher, Carol P.

I headed downtown around 9 am.  Since Archer and Beauty are incubating the eggs, there hasn’t been too much activity.  That will all change when the first eyas hatches.

Today I met Dana and Larry O (with Cleo) on the Broad St. Bridge.  Just before Larry arrived, Dana and I saw Beauty fly off of the Mercury statue down to the river on the south side of the bridge.  We crossed over to that side and were excited to see Beauty down below in the shallow water of the Genesee River. 

It was a warm, cloudy day and Beauty took advantage of the cool water, drinking and bathing for about 10 minutes.  She then took off and flew through a group of about 7 Ring-billed Gulls that weren’t very happy at the intrusion.  Beauty ended up landing on the base of the Mercury statue, where she started to preen and dry off.

I’ll let Dana post her pictures, since she has a really great camera, but I was lucky to get some video to share with everyone.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-hjFshZtck

Took lunch on Broad St. Parked in the middle of the bridge.
Quickly sighted Beauty on OCSR.
Around 12:18, Beauty pretty directly flew to the nestbox. It is interesting to note that her approaches tend to involve fairly angled up-lifts. From OCSR, she disappeared behind Reuters Publishing, but when I next saw her, she was centered up on Times Square at about the 8th floor, and to my way of thinking pretty close to the face of the building. That was when she swooped up his angle and landed right at the nextbox.
In she went and out came Archer.
He headed out behind Reuters, and when I did not see him land on OCSR or Mercury, I changed position to check the Wilder Bldg, which is where I found him on the copper ledge. He preened a bit, and then headed over to the base of Mercury, disappearing from view again.
I watched for a stoop over the parking lot for a bit, but it was time to head back to the office. Getting back to my car, I was able to see Archer still on Mercury.
Next thing he was off and headed towards me. He flew overhead and out over the river, circling by the library twice. I did not see what had him so interested, but he was not more than 20 or 30 feet above street level.
He came back over Broad St, circled and headed up Broad, past South Ave and over the ramp garage. Again I lost sight, but I stayed put.
Within 10 minutes, I had him coming back up Broad St. As he flew overhead I could see that he had completed a hunt. I don’t know what he caught (but it wasn’t anything big like a Condor or flamingo or elephant).
Archerwent to the south-east wing on TS and started cleaning. It was time for me to go.
Nice watch on a cold, and somewhat cloudy day.

On what turned out to be a beautiful day, Cleo the Catahoula Leopard falcon-watcher-in-training and I headed to the Broad St bridge. Getting there, I found Lou, Dana and Carol P actively engaged in the pleasure of falcon watching.

It was a pretty good watch. We had Archer in 2 stoops from the OCSR. The first one took Archer way out over the river, headed south – way beyond Court St. We got a look at the target and it appeared to be a hawk, but as I said it was pretty far out. Archer cranked the wings all the way until he got close when he went into a 45 degree descent after the hawk.

We lost sight of him, but he showed up again.

Later on while we were in the Thompson parking lot, Archer did a vertical stoop from OCSR down the southeast face. Unfortunately the buildings got in the way and we lost sight of him about half-way down. It was a glorious stoop, and something I had not seen since the Kodak days. He went right down the face of the building. It is always amazing to me how they can pull out before hitting the ground.

We had one other burst of activity. Archer was flying around the parking lot going behind buildings and appearing again over our heads. Best guess is that he was spending time and gaining altitude to get back to OCSR.

Pretty good day for falcon-watching.

I was out over the weekend for a little falcon watching, and I also managed to squeeze in a couple of trips downtown over my lunch breaks the past couple of days.  All three visits featured one or the other of the falcons chowing down, along with the obligatory flight shots, of course…

http://birdblog.marchlords.com/2010/04/beauty-in-spotlight.html

http://birdblog.marchlords.com/2010/04/archer-grabs-lunch-two-days-running.html

From Rochester Falcon Watcher Carol P.

I spent a few hours watching Archer and Beauty on Sunday.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and they were quite active.  Twice on Sunday, Archer hunted successfully and brought in food for Beauty while she remained at the nestbox guarding the eggs. 

The first time Archer brought in prey and prepared it on top of the Times Square bldg.  When he finished, Archer flew down to the nestbox and Beauty accepted his offer.  She flew over to the Wilder Bldg across the street to enjoy her meal while Archer remained at the nestbox.

The 2nd time was early afternoon.  Archer flew in with prey and landed on top of the Times Square bldg, this time at the NW wing.  Archer had barely landed when a very vocal Beauty flew out of the nestbox and landed next to him.  Well, you can see what happened in this video. 

I apologize for the jumpiness of the video.  My next camera will have image stabilization.  🙂

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43KB98b1rg

by Lou

We had a beautiful day for a Falcon Watch today. Quite a few people showed up to enjoy the nice weather and sunshine. Watchers included Dana, Carol P, Kathy O, Joyce, Brian, Dawn, Larry O, Jeanne, new watchers Dave and Diane, and myself.

As far as falcon watch activitiy, there really wasn’t that much happening in the morning (Dana and I got there around 9:00 am) – we had one spotted on top of Times Square that pretty much stayed there most of the morning. The Rochester city crew was out on the Main Street bridge removing the log-jam of trees and debris in the Genesee River at the bridge, providing us with some non-falcon related entertainment. I have some pics in the attached album showing how they used a large crane to pull trees up onto the bridge where they sawed them into smaller sizes and loaded them into trucks for removal. Some of the trees they pulled out of the river were 80’ monsters. They only did about a third of the logjam so my guess is that they’ll be out again tomorrow morning, weather dependent.

As more people showed up, we had one falcon fly near Xerox before it returned to Times Square. We also had a Kestrel visitor that Archer chased. The Kestrel landed on a fire escape across from the nestbox and we think it may have escaped into the building through an open window after Archer flew down to him. Eventually, Archer gave up and flew back up to Times Square.

We left in the afternoon with Archer on top of Times Square near the wings and Beauty on the ledge of the nestbox.

Click on the picture in this report to check out the pics. (Log-in required)

Lou